Pioneer Plasmas & Sky HDTV boxes - a warning

[Analoguesat]

Pioneer are issuing warnings that the Sky HDTV box may damage some plasma screens when the HDCP kicks in. These posts copied off the off AVforums.com:

OMFG!!!!! MY Sky HD box looks like it's ****** BOTH HDMI inputs on my Pioneer PDP-436XDE .

I went home at lunchtime and tried to play 5 or 6 region 1&2 DVD's on my Arcam DV79 (HDMI obviously), all I get now is stuttering audio and no picture. However, the Arcam setup screens still display perfectly and 'ripped' DVD's play perfectly (full picture and sound) via HDMI. So... the problem only happens when HDCP kicks in.

** IF YOU OWN A PIONEER 6TH GENERATION PLASMA AND SKY HD BOX, I WOULD STRONGLY RECOMMEND NOT USING THE HDMI OUTPUT ON THE HD BOX UNTIL THIS IS RESOLVED, AS YOU MAY DAMAGE YOUR PIONEER MEDIA BOX. **

and

Just got of the phone to Pioneer. I have just been told that using the HDMI connection on the Sky HD box "MAY BE DAMAGING THE PLASMA MEDIA BOX". I hope to god that my Sky HD box has not permenantly damaged my Pioneer!!!

[imported_Martyn]

Hi..

Sky are taking this very seriously it seems....

My buddy has had Sky HD installed Friday 25th August and the install team INSISTED that his connection to his Pioneer control box was done via componant visual and digital audio via fibre optic. (Which you need to do even if you use the HDMI connection as Sky HD only sends 5.1 digital audio via the fibre optic port. Important if like me you use the Denon 2807 AV amp or similar for HDMI Switching aswell as audio)

[BGonaSTICK]

Hey, thanks for the update Martyn

The Pioneer HDMI problem is one of the scariest things I've ever come across in satellite hardware terms!

Also, I didn't know about Sky HD not carrying 5.1 over HDMI. That's rubbish!

Originally Posted by hdmi.org

From the start, HDMI was defined to carry 8-channels of 192kHz, 24-bit uncompressed audio, which exceeds all current consumer media formats.

In addition, HDMI can carry any currently available flavor of compressed audio format such as Dolby (including Dolby Digital EX 7.1, Dolby Digital Plus 7.1, Dolby TrueHD) or DTS (including DTS-ES 6.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio). (Such compressed formats are the only multi-channel or high-resolution audio formats that can be carried across the older S/PDIF or AES/EBU interfaces).

HDMI 1.3 adds additional support for new lossless digital surround audio formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. Additionally, most existing HDMI sources can output any compressed stream, and the newer sources can output uncompressed 6-channel, 96kHz audio from a DVD-Audio disk. There are A/V receivers on the market that can accept and process the 6- or 8-channel audio from HDMI.

[imported_Martyn]

Originally Posted by BGonaSTICK

Hey, thanks for the update Martyn

The Pioneer HDMI problem is one of the scariest things I've ever come across in satellite hardware terms!

Also, I didn't know about Sky HD not carrying 5.1 over HDMI. That's rubbish!

I agree it's crazy...

I noticed it after the install was finished and when watching anything with Dolby digital decoding, my amp was not switching over from Prologic2.

I initially thought that the HD box output menu was set to standard stereo and not DD, but this was not the case.

On reading the HD box guide, it indeed states "dolby digital 5.1 can be experienced by connecting a suitable fibre opital cable from your HD box to a source capable of..." and so on...

Now i'm ok with this as the Denon 2807 must be one of the most flexible AV amps I have used when it comes to audio input switching. I have 6 or 7 unassigned fibre optic inputs that you can assign to any of the the amps inputs; Mini DIsc, DVD, CDR, TV/SAT etc. This meant that my 'TV/ Sat' input visually was set to HDMI and the audio was assigned to one of the fibre optic inputs so I can enjoy 5.1.

I can see this however causing problems to people that may not have this facility on their amps if they wish to use an AV amp with HDMI swithing.

My DVD player the Pioneer DVR920 H also has an HDMI out, and thankfully does all the decoding through the HDMI cable.