My Humax Forum » Freeview HD » HDR FOX T2

No sound on HDMI

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    RGOn-Humax

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    I've had an HDR-FOX T2 for some years (and I've upgraded it to a 2tb HDD).
    After moving house in 2017, we bought a new TV (an LG 43UH620V) but the only way I could get sound from the Humax was by using the RCA audio connectors AS WELL AS an HDMI cable (and I tried many combinations of cable & ports).
    After contacting Humax (18/09/2018 - they were very helpful) I tried what they suggested (disable HDMI CEC setting - it was) I eventually found a setting on the TV 'HDMI ULTRA HD Deep Colour' which was turned on for all three HDMI ports: with nothing to lose, I tried setting each one off (1 by one with a TV re-boot in between) and, suddenly, I had sound.

    | Tue 25 Sep 2018 11:10:40 #1 |
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    Martin Liddle

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    RGOn-Humax - 14 minutes ago  » 
    I eventually found a setting on the TV 'HDMI ULTRA HD Deep Colour' which was turned on for all three HDMI ports: with nothing to lose, I tried setting each one off (1 by one with a TV re-boot in between) and, suddenly, I had sound.

    Thanks, that is an interesting observation. I wonder if that could also be implicated in the sound blip problem that I and a number of other HDR-FOX T2 users have found when connected to recent LG TVs; I will experiment.

    | Tue 25 Sep 2018 11:27:27 #2 |
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    RobinB

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    Snap. Now the problem is working out if it is Humax's or LG's problem as they seem the common factors. Shame to see this has been going on so long!

    We have several source devices:
    Humax Foxsat HDR
    HDR-Fox T2
    Panasonic Blue-ray DMP-BDT310
    Chromecast Ultra
    No-name media player

    ...which feed into a Denon AV amp (AVR-X3400H)
    ...which feeds into our new LG 55B9PLA

    The Chromecast Ultra is the only source which goes over 1080p.

    We first experienced the mute problem on our Fox-T2 in November, when we replaced our Samsung HD TV a new LG 4K HDR TV. There wasn't a problem initially. The problem reared its head only after we had watched something from the Chromecast. After switching to the Chromecast the TV presented a dialog:
    To provide an optimised picture quality, the ULTRA HD Deep Colour
    will be turned on for the current HDMI port. While applying the settings, picture or sound may not work properly. If the issue persists, please revert the settings or reboot your connected external source
    (OK)

    There wasn't a cancel option, I'll come back to that later.
    Deep colour was enabled, we thought - "fine".
    Then we noticed that the next time we played something back from the Humax Fox T2 there was no sound (we added an external drive to make it a recorder).

    Google was my friend an I soon found many posts advising people to turn off "Deep Colour". It worked. It may take a few seconds to find the menu, but within a second or two of turning Deep Colour off on that HDMI input the sound came back. No need to switch channels or restart any devices in the chain.

    My ongoing problem is that LG presents the dialog *any* time we switch to the Chromecast. Not every time, it may remember for the duration of the set being on. I haven't quite worked it out. What I am sure of is that it keeps presenting the dialog if we have the audacity to use the Chromecast.
    It seems like bad UI design to present an "OK" dialog which also warns of the consequences, which doesn't give you a "cancel" option.

    * I have raised this as an issue with LG *
    They are treating it as only an improvement suggestion from a user.

    Their initial response was that it was necessary for 4K. It is not. It is about using greater bit-depth than the standard 8-bit of all HD and quite a lot of current HD. HDR is likely to be 10-bit or greater, but 10-bit should be fine on quite legacy HDMI interfaces (if I understand correctly). There's a lot of Googleable opinion that deep colour is a solution looking for a problem, it's possibly better if your source device might do a better job of scaling and tone-mapping than display device. That's unlikely. For the moment I would be happy to turn it off. I just wish LG would let it stay off!!

    The solution of turning off Deep Colour is obviously a good one if the problem device is directly attached to specific HDMI port. Unfortunately all of our devices are routed through the AV amp and then into one input on the TV.
    We want to keep it that way because we can get AV amp menus on-screen when selecting the surround decoding on some programmes. Plugging either the Humax or the Chromecast onto another HDMI port isn't the direction we want to go if we can avoid it.

    Despite my (possibly flawed) understanding of Deep Colour, having it turned it off doesn't seem like a good long term solution. Sooner or later the blu-ray may get replaced by a 4K HDR-capable blu-ray, then my concern might be that we are compromising it a bit.

    Just last night I discovered that our Denon Amp has some useful "HDMI Diagnostics & Troubleshooting". It diagnosed "ERR A1-01" - "Audio Packet doesn't come from Source"
    It also allows the user to try things like setting capability limits on each input to the amp, such as limiting the resolution down, or not supporting HDR, DolbyVision or DTS-X or DolbyAtmos.
    Great I thought!! I can disable Deep colour for this one source - That didn't work, so I limited nearly everything else (and turned equipment off and on again between settings... it didn't come good. I got to bed VERY late!

    I think there is a significant upshot from that discovery...
    I was previously inclined to think that the elderly Humax was likely to be at fault, through failing to deliver correctly something which it presumably negotiated between the TV and itself. Now that the Denon is sticking its oar in the way and declaring non-DeepColour, non-HDR I'd have thought it was now the LG destination which is failing to take account of a source which can't supply video components at greater bit-depth.

    I hope I am right, because updates to our more recent TVs are more likely than to our Fox-T2s.
    If people are turning Deep Colour off for a multitude of reasons LG need to discover what the problems are and how to resolve them. I know that most HDMI problems are two-way, with the hand-shaking coming to the wrong conclusion, but there seems to be a pattern of LG err-ing on the wrong side with lots of devices.

    I think I'm going to need to talk to Denon customer support to see if they would have expected my "limits" on the HDMI input to have worked.

    Denon's quite well hidden diagnostics for any other Denon users investigating similar:
    http://www.theaav.com/uploads/2/6/0/1/26016310/denon_hdmi_diagnostics_and_troubleshooting_eng_im_v00.pdf

    | Wed 5 Feb 2020 17:14:09 #3 |
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    RobinB

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    I meant to add that I think it is interesting that the slightly older Humax FoxsatHDR does not have a problem with the deep colour.

    Given that the HD-Fox T2, like the OP's HDR-Fox T2 is unusual in displaying the no-audio problem it seems likely that LG will point the finger of blame elsewhere, but LG seem to be making big assumptions about automatically re-enabling Deep Colour whenever they see a 4K signal arrive.

    | Wed 5 Feb 2020 17:19:46 #4 |

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