[SOLVED] HDMI Connection Home Theatre Problem / Open for suggestions

[Deleted member 1272431]

Hi all,

I have a problem with my home theatre setting and hope you guys can help me out.
I bought about 4-5 years back a bose cinemate 520 and a 4K Sony TV to go with it. At the time, I settled for 1080p as 4k content where not a thing yet (and oh, the GB required for a 4k movie). Recently HVEC came about and 4K content is widely available and thought about upgrading what needed to truly get what I bought the stuff in the first place for.

The bose amp is on a corner of the room and I unfortunately have only one HDMI, high speed, high reliability cable. It is the one supposed to connect the bose from video out to monitor. All other connections were supposed to pass through the bose. Now, HDCP 2.2 was well thought, so much it was not backward compatible and my system supports only 2.1. I get my bluray to pass 4k video to the bose and then to the tv only by disconnecting and reconnecting my HDMI cable (I guess no HDCP handshake between the components, but weird it then works). However, HDCP converter did not work and I cannot unplug and replug the cable every time. I cannot run multiple cables to the TV.

My solution was an HDMI matrix, allowing me to run video bypassing the bose but doing the same job and running audio via HDMI extraction to the bose. Everything seemed to work fine under tests but today I tried watching some stuff and realized the tv now reads black as grey. That is, if there is a cut to black (tested with many movies, take for instance the first two minutes of Cars) on cutting to black the whole room is lit as it actually reads a dark gray. IMPORTANT NOTE: this does not happen when connecting the bluray directly yo the tv (i.e. excluding the matrix (the TV is not true black, and when connecting directly whith the bluray the backpanel is still lit, but it's definetly black rather than gray).

At this point I have no idea what to do, I need a reliable, Hi-Fi solution (but I don't feel as changing a Bose amp that costed 1500 euros).

Please let me know any ideas/suggestions/comments you may have, it would mean a lot to me

Thanks for your time
Thomas

 

[hang-the-9]

Try using another brand / model of the HDMI audio extractor.

 

[Deleted member 1272431]

Thank you for your reply.
I tried that today but I am stuck with the sme problem, which is weird. Any other suggestions?

 

[hang-the-9]

Thank you for your reply.
I tried that today but I am stuck with the sme problem, which is weird. Any other suggestions?

If the Bose system has optical in you can connect the disk player directly to the TV and use the audio out off the tv to the Bose system.

 

[Deleted member 1272431]

Thanks again for getting back to me.
Unfortunately, I have only one HDMI cable. No way I can have a 20m toslink going back to the Bose. Btw, I have three sources I need to get to the tv, and the bluray has two HDMI outputs and can output audio separately (but is the only source that can do that).
Additionally, toslink does not support uncompressed digital signals such as DTS Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD, so I'd be giving up those.
I think I might take a leap and try a more expensive matrix, as it seems to be the only possible solution for now...

 

[hang-the-9]

Thanks again for getting back to me.
Unfortunately, I have only one HDMI cable. No way I can have a 20m toslink going back to the Bose. Btw, I have three sources I need to get to the tv, and the bluray has two HDMI outputs and can output audio separately (but is the only source that can do that).
Additionally, toslink does not support uncompressed digital signals such as DTS Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD, so I'd be giving up those.
I think I might take a leap and try a more expensive matrix, as it seems to be the only possible solution for now...

You have a 20 meter cable run? Did you try using a shorter cable to see if that helps with the color level? You are into the HDMI cable length limits and also using another device in between. Use something like a 3 meter cable and see if it works better.

 

[Deleted member 1272431]

You have a 20 meter cable run? Did you try using a shorter cable to see if that helps with the color level? You are into the HDMI cable length limits and also using another device in between. Use something like a 3 meter cable and see if it works better.

Thanks once more for replying. It seems I have finally solved the issue. I'll post the solution if anyone encounters this issue and wants to avoid spending money in a whole new system.

The error was indeed relating to the matrices. The ones I previously bought were not "pro enough" and did result in inconsistent connection. The new one (bought for a little bit less than 400 euros) does the job wonderfully. I suspect also thanks to full EDID management.