Why won't my Apple TV (2nd Gen) work with my awesome HD-capable Sony Trinitron?

August 22, 2011 11:05 AM

AppleTvFilter: I'm trying to get my Apple TV (2 gen) to work on my HDCP-capable Sony Trinitron, but am having some weird issues.

I bought a Sony Trinitron KV-36HS510 so I could play all my old retro gaming consoles, as well as have the added bonus of it being HD-capable up to 1080i. According to the specs, the DVI input on the TV is HDCP compliant, so I bought an HDCP compliant HDMI to DVI cable from MonoPrice, plugged in my Apple TV, but nothing will play.

I'm not getting any HDCP errors, or wavy lines or anything; in fact, the picture looks great. Whenever I try to access a Netflix movie, I can navigate through the menus, then I get the "Accessing Netflix" spinner, then the movie loads but never plays (I can see one frame... it's like the movie is frozen). This occurs whether I start a movie from the beginning, resume play, or fast forward to a random spot. More troubling is when I try to access my own content on my home network I get a "Can't stream content" error.

Any ideas what might be causing this?

posted by bjork24 to technology (5 answers total)

Doesn't sound like anything to do with the TV, and everything to do with the ATV. Have you tried wired vs. wireless connection? Have you tried doing an upgrade to the latest ATV2 software?
posted by noahv at 11:20 AM on August 22, 2011

Software is updated, but I haven't tried a wired connection yet.
posted by bjork24 at 11:21 AM on August 22, 2011

With the Netflix movies, when they freeze, is it accompanied by any type of error message? Or is it just stuck indefinitely on the frozen frame?
posted by BurntHombre at 12:44 PM on August 22, 2011

Can you play movie trailers? I'm not too familiar with HDCP, but there's always a chance it applies only to DRM'd content (unless, of course, you have non-iTunes Store video content in your library). Trying a wired connection (as noahv suggests) would be a good way of ruling out reception issues. For the sake of narrowing things down, was your Apple TV working fine with a different TV prior to this (and if so, was it in the same room)?
posted by jaffacakerhubarb at 5:08 PM on August 22, 2011

It seems like you have two distinct problems which may or may not be connected:

-Issue with inability to play anything from the ATV over the HDMI -> DVI cable.

-Netflix doesn't stream properly, or at all.

First issue could be a number of things; From what I've read, HDCP over that type of connection is kind of dicey. Could be a bad cable, can you test it on a known-good system? When you say nothing will play, do you mean that no HDCP only media won't play, or you can't even see the menus/startup screen, etc.?

You wouldn't happen to be using a longer than usual DVI or HDMI cable? I've had problems with the max cable length of HDCP. Or maybe going through an HDMI switch/hub thingy? Those are notorious for not passing through an HDCP connection.

Second issue could be more internet related, when I stream HD Netflix it eats the lion's share of the bandwidth, and I'm on a decent 15/8 Comcast line. Can you stream other content? Is it just HD you're having the problem with?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, upon review it seems an awful lot like an interrogation.
posted by Sphinx at 5:31 PM on August 22, 2011