The receiver I had driving my pc speakers went out, so I moved my Sony receiver into the office and picked up a new receiver for the living room. I decided on the Insignia NS-R5101HD since it decodes the HD formats and was $100 off. My htpc is hooked up to the receiver with a DVI to HDMI cable and then an HDMI cable from the receiver to the tv. I never had any problems with this setup with my Sony receiver. With the new receiver I get a picture for a few seconds when the pc boots up, I see the BIOS screen but as soon as windows loads up the picture goes out and my tv displays "no signal".
Any ideas on what could be causing this? Like I said, I never had any problems with the Sony receiver. Nothing has changed with my setup except for swapping out the receiver. I know it can't be anything wrong with the tv or htpc since they both work fine plugging the pc straight into the tv.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Insignia®+-+500W+5.1-Channel+A/V+Home+Theater+Receiver/9320335.p?id=1218084659399&skuId=9320335
My guess is that your pc is not fully HDCP compliant and does not have repeater architecture.
I suspect your old receiver was from before the requirement for repeater architecture in the HDMI PC codes.
Your symptom is classic. You get the initial picture and when your new receiver asks for the first repeater handshake, it does not get, it, concludes you are a pirate, and cuts the signal.
Any device that receives and then transmits HD over HDMI, like a receiver is required to have repeater architecture now. A TV being an end device is only required to make one initial handshake.
So I think your HTPC needs an upgrade, But I know this is a tricky issue in HTPC now, especially with windows Vista. So may be the HTPC enthusiasts can pick up the ball now and advise you on what hardware and software upgrades you need to be HDCP compliant to the current codes.