Hey everybody,
I have a problem that I'd like some input on trying to solve... I recently purchased a Samsung HDTV tuner set top box (model DTB-H260) to use with my 3-4 year old Sony HDready TV (model KV-30HS420) since it doesn't have a built in HD tuner. I connected the two via a 3 foot HDMI cable (go monoprice!!!), and everything looks great for the first 30 minutes or so of watching the signal from the HD tuner, but then the color in the picture goes away (except for a slight red tint to some parts of the picture). This occurs on all channels and even the on screen display from the tuner goes to black & white/gray scale. If the tuner is off for a while and I turn it on, the picture will be in color for a little while (sometimes only 3-5 minutes, sometimes up to 20 or 30 minutes), but it will eventually go to black and white. When I change channels, the color returns for just a second, then fades out again.
This occurs only over HDMI connection to my Sony KV-30HS420 TV. When using the component cables, everything is fine. I've tried different HDMI cables and had the same results with each. This happens when the tuner is set to ANY output resolution (480i/p, 720p & 1080i), not just 1080i. Sony says that this TV model is HDCP compliant, and it shouldn't be the source of the problem; but that's also what I expected them to say... Samsung told me to return the unit for a replacement unit as they couldn't explain why I was getting these results, so I did replace the tuner with another one of the same model, but I still get the same results. I've tried using a different TV (new 42" Philips plasma) via HDMI, and it worked fine with no color loss over the two days that I had the tuner hooked up to the Philips plasma, so the problem doesn't occur with all TV's.
There have been a 3 or 4 posts on other forums from people having this same problem between this Samsung tuner and a couple different Sony HDMI TV's, but no one has found a solution other than using component cables, and no one has really offered much in the way of responses there either, so I wanted to throw this out to you guys to see if anybody has any input to try to figure this out, yet another HDMI challenge. I'll likely just have to keep using component cables, but want to exhaust all attempts to figure out the specific problem before giving up. Meanwhile, I'll be using my component cables...
-Brad
