Connection Confusion?!?!

I received my Blue Jeans cables today and I just finished setting them up. 5 speaker cables, 3 DVI/HDMI and 2 Y connectors (1 male to 2 female).

I successfully bi-amped my front right and left speakers...not sure if I hear a difference yet, but the entire family is sleeping and I will have to wait until tomorrow to really listen.

I had my Motorola box connected directly to the TV with (video) HDMI to HDMI and the (audio) optical to 990. Everything was working fine.

I connected 3 HDMI/DVI cables to the 990. I changed the input on the TV and the 990, and although I have sound, (no change to optical) I have no video. What am I doing wrong and what am I gaining by running the HDMI/DVI from a source to the 990 and then to the TV?

Any help would be appreciated.

Aaron

The reason to run the HDMI video through the 990 is switching - many HDTV's only have a single DVI or HDMI input (although two inputs are becoming more common), making it impossible to connect two DVI/HDMI sources. In your case, you ahve both the Motorola cable box and the 981HD. The 981HD has to use HDMI, since it lacks a component output.

There has been a fair bit of discussion lately about the various problems with Motorola cable boxes (Scientific Atlanta's not much better, although as of late Moto seems to be having all the major problems). It's possible that the Moto's HDCP implementation can't deal with switches between it and the display, thus making it impossible to get an HDCP handshake. Maybe some other Motorola users can chime in with some feedback. In the meanwhile, you might experiment with the order in which you turn things on - have the 990 and TV on and the 990 on the correct input before you turn on the cable box, for example. It also never hurts to make sure you have everything hooked up right and set up right in the menu (in case you connected it to DVI2 and picked DVI1 in the menu, for example - I've done that with component inputs on the 990 before).

I know the 981HD has no problem with this because I'm using mine with the 990's switching, but I switched to component output for my Pace Micro HD cable box because it occasionally had HDCP handshake errors that bugged my wife - and in that case, at least, component output looked just as goodas DVI.

gonk - Thanks for your response. My Panasonic from Costo does have 2 HDMI inputs. I tried what you mentioned this morning. First I turned on the TV and 990 and lastly the cable box. It still did not work.

I purchased a new 981HD which should arrive today and then I will plug that in to see if it works. If it does, then it will confirm that the cable box is not compatible with the 990.

Might there be another setting in the setup on the Motorola box for the HDCP handshake to work properly? In any case, I will let you know as soon as I hook up the new Oppo. Thanks again.

Aaron

The HDCP handshake is intended to simply "happen" so there's not really any settings to fight with - it may very well simply be a case of an improper HDCP implementation by Motorola such that it chokes with switchers.

Hi Aaronmadler, I kind of had the same problem with my scientific atlanta cable box, have to turn on 990 than cable box then tv{JVc}. sometimes its just finding the right sequence as Gonk said if I do it wrong I get a pop-up box on tv that says does not support this connection. we have charter out here. Good luck