Q10 and Sony Bravia TV - The sync setting blues!

[Motahed]

OK, so here's an interesting one...

I have Sony Bravia KD-49X8309C 49" TV with an Himedia Q10,  a ZGemma satellite box, a Samsung Blu-ray player and a Sony CT780 Sound Bar / Subwoofer plugged into the TV via HDMI. (The soundbar via the dedicated ARC HDMI input and all equipment updated to latest firmwares). All was well until I tried to set up the Bravia Sync functions so the TV remote would also control the soundbar and this is where the fun started! At what appeared to be random times, upon switch on or changing inputs the soundbar would disconnect or be disconnected from the TV and all devices would disappear from the sync'd devices list (and of course no sound).

To cut a long story short, after much investigation.... after many different HDMI cables (high speed etc) and every combination of device/input/settings configuration available I discovered that the problem seems to lie with the Q10. No matter what I did, as soon as the Q10 is connected to the TV the Bravia would lose it sync'd devices, even when the Q10 is in standby and has not yet been switched on!

There seems to be no option but to use the soundbar via the optic connection only, which works great but it's annoying that I can't use my soundbar / satellite via the TV remote with the Q10 plugged in. There does not seem to be any other symptoms or problems with any of the devices (most of them are new anyway, not that that means much these days ) so I'm guessing that the Q10 does not comply to the same HDMI standards that the Bravia Sync setup requires and it's just my luck to buy the two devices that won't play well together?

Anybody got any thoughts, ideas?

[Nice Monkey]

YEP, have seen this before with Android based Media Players implementing HDMI-CEC the wrong way.

Start with disabling HDMI-CEC feature by feature under Lolipop settings. Leave it powered-on during the tests. The problem is then probably gone but obviously HDMI-CEC features for Q10 are lost.
Report exactly what happens. when powered-off or put to standby and effects of various settings. Look specifically at side-effects on all your other components.  I have seen another brands player where the media player and my STB fights for Port-selection on the HDMI-Bus (flip-flop).

A mostly unknown but crucial fact is that HDMI-CEC is a BUS-type protocol and that all devices on a bus can and will talk to each other (=all ports HDMI wired together directly and indirectly). So in this case any port on the Soundbar plus any Port on the TV form together a single BUS.  This results in the wrong implementations using the wrong commands. Do have a lot of documentation on this and diagnosed some problems in the past.

Amongst others diagnosed how a media player can cause HDMI-CEC originated problems for other equipment on the same bus while the offending media player itself is totally powered-off or put in standby. The previous generation Himedia players also had that specific problem. I hope they did not repeat that same mistake again.

[futeko.com]

Could be caused by Q10 not supporting CEC.

See this thread for ways to solve this: http://www.futeko.com/newforum/index.php?topic=166.0

[Nice Monkey]

Could be caused by Q10 not supporting CEC.

See this thread for ways to solve this: http://www.futeko.com/newforum/index.php?topic=166.0

Sorry; see now this is for Q10 4K3D which indeed does not support HDMI-CEC the correct way. Leave it powered on to avoid the problem, cut the PIN or use the Lindy adapter. The chipset pulls down the HDMI-CEC signal  on the bus when powered down or put into standby, that is not allowed as it blocks the bus for all other communication as the consequence.

This is the last big problem referenced to by me, diagnosed that one in detail. All devices of any brand using that chipset had that same very nasty HW design problem. The Lindy (HDMI-CEC Less adapter) bypassed the problem by isolating the offending HDMI-CEC signal PIN only (was designed specifically for this). Was seen on mostly Kitkat generation of Android based media players..
 
HDMI-CEC is a very powerful and extensive protocol with many features. There are general features (power control, port selection, volume control etc) and brand specific advanced features. Doing it the right way is not so easy. Have seen many brands/products struggling with this.  Will test Q10 Pro on this when my box arrives.

[Motahed]

Hi, thanks for all that info. Sorry I started another thread about something that had already been covered but I was not familiar with CEC, I sure am now! At least it's a relief to know that it's a problem with the hardware and that I'm not going mad. 

For now it seems that the optical cable is the [easy] solution, it's not a major problem just means one more remote 

I will be interested to hear how the Q10 pro acts / performs.


Update: Successfully tried the pin 13 trick and now things are working as I need them to.