4K content with amp

Kemik · 3 Jun 2018 at 10:09

Hi guys,

I bought an LG 55B7V a few days ago and set it up yesterday. Previous TV was a 1080p 3D so I have never had a 4K TV before. Input all goes via an Onkyo HTX-22HDX before passing to the TV. As far as I am aware, the HDMI cables used are all 1.4.

Went to watch Virgin Media this morning to find it having weird sound and video issues. If I have the TV off, the sound works great. If I restart Virgin Media, I see the start up and then it screws up. I switched HDMI cables, same thing. I put the HDMI direct to the TV and it worked great.

Then I fixed it, I switched Virgin Media from auto detect (4K) down to 1080p and everything worked. Is the bottleneck likely to be the HDMI cable or the amp?

Thanks!

Kemik · 3 Jun 2018 at 12:13

I've changed the settings, which fixed it until I moved some HDMI ports around to try and setup ARC for Chromecast. Unfortunately it is now still showing grey bars. As soon as you turn the TV off the sound comes through the amp perfectly fine, so I still think it is a bandwidth issue somewhere. The amp is going crazy trying to work out the profile from the VM box (display shows the audio type, etc when its working fine).

Might have to do as suggested for a work around - video direct to TV then audio out to amp. That isn't too much of an issue as I have a Harmony remote.

Arc also wouldn't work, but that's more down to the fact that the amp hides the ARC channel when not in use so Harmony can't track the channel properly.

Kemik · 3 Jun 2018 at 15:43

barmyllama said:
You may also find that the latest V6 box requires HDCP 2.2 compliance, which your amp doesn't support over it's HDMI ports.

It worked before I switched TV's

nlyh said:
My AV amp can only do 4k 30hz and doesn't have HDCP 2.2. I just use a 4k 60hz splitter box with HDCP 2.2 and coaxial/optical audio extraction instead. I run coax digital cable from that to AV amp and it works well.

All my sources like Fire tv 4k, computer etc go via HDMI to that little box then box has one lead going to 4k tv.

Will give it a go, but that's kind of the point of the amp and harmony

Kemik · 4 Jun 2018 at 10:28

On the splitter suggestion, will I need a separate splitter for each 4k source? E.g. if I wanted to use my PS4 too I can either limit the PS4 to 1080p or put it via a splitter? Beginning to feel like an upgraded AVR is required at some point when I start using the PS4 again...