Black Screen After Boot

[treeless]

I have searched and found a few discussions on this issue, all centered around 720p output, but none of the workarounds / solutions provided have worked for me. Currently the BB will boot and display the box animation, but then nothing but black.

When I first set it up it worked as expected, in that I was able to see the UI and watch videos. Nearly immediately after initially booting up the BB (late in the evening on 11/13) I selected to install the available upgrade and most of my usage was done after this. I never specifically set an output resolution on the BB. After playing around with it for a couple days I believe that I had the TV off with the BB still on and instead of turning the TV back on in order to shutdown the BB I simply held the BB power button until it turned off. From this point on I have not been able to get past the boot animation. I only have the one TV and it is a Visio 720p (not sure on exact model at the moment).

What I have attempted so far:

• Power cycle BB
• Power cycle TV
• Unplug / Plug HDMI cable
• Use second HDMI input on TV
• Boot BB with HDMI cable disconnected
• Boot BB to Recovery and select Reset all Settings
• Boot BB to Recovery and select Restore Factory

According the TV the BB outputs the box animation in 720p and the black screen that is displayed after this animation is also apparently 720p, so I can't tell if this is related to any of the other issues surrounding this resolution.

If anyone has any advice on how I can get this thing back to a functional state I would greatly appreciate it.

[esch]

treeless, I'll appreciate if you can answer the following so I can better direct assisting you:
have you tried a different HDMI Cord?
when doing a factory restore, do you get prompted for an upgrade afterwards? if yes, does it go through smoothly?
do you have audio connected separately? if yes do you hear the Boxee UI sounds while screen is blank?

[treeless]

Thanks for the response.

• I have not yet tried a different HDMI cable. It appered to not be a factor as it was working originally and does work during the loading and box animation displays.
• After I did the "Factory Restore" I received the same result, black screen after box animation. I therefore never saw any prompts to upgrade or anything else for that matter.
• I do not currently have a separate audio connection; I am using HDMI for both.

I can certainly try a different HDMI cable as well as a separate audio line when I return home, but again I find it hard to believe that the issue lies with the HDMI cable (of course stranger things have happened).

Thanks again for the response, as well as any other responses that may follow.

[maxintnet]

I am having the same issue on a 37" 1080p LC LCD display
I tried 3 different HDMI cables, bu no success.. Please advise because I am getting really impatient

[treeless]

Well one more update as I prepare to package this bad boy up and try my luck with a second one.

I have tried every thing I can think of, including everything I could find posted here to get my video back with absolutely zero success.

• Tried three different HDMI cables, all pulled from working devices.
• Have multiple devices that I can force to 480p or 720p, either resolution always works and displays video on the TV.
• Have tried combinations of pulling the cable from a device currently outputing both 480p and 720p (different occasions) and then plugging in the BB after it had already booted to its black screen in an attempt to "trick" the HDMI port on my tv.
• Found two different isos posted here, a 140MB one and a 146MB one. Uprgrading from USB using both with no change in results.
• Reset my TV to factory defaults.
• I plugged in RCA audio cables as was suggested and I don't believe I am receiving an audio. As I can't see what is going on, it is hard to say if I should be hearing audio or not, but nothing is heard.

That is just about all I could think of and nothing I do seems to have any impact on the BB. Every time it loads, then displays the box animation, then a deep, engulfing blackness.

One side note, I have not been able to find a description of the different between the "hold for 5-10 seconds and get a yellow logo" and the "hold for 20+ seconds and get a red red red green logo". With the yellow logo I can reset settings, restore to factory, upgrade from USB, etc. From the red logo, the BB never boots past the initial loading screen. What is the different here?

Edit: Well I found the answer to the logo question, odd that you can force a "update failure" state by holding the power button for 20+ seconds.

Again, when I first plugged the BB in it worked. I installed the update and then watched some internet videos and generally just played around. After playing some videos from a SMB share and then turning it off by holding down the power button (perhaps the first reboot after the initial software update reboot) that I ended up in this black screen black hole.

Any final thoughts or recommendations would of course be appreciated.

[jbussoli]

Have setup and used the BB for three days now (it updated to 1.0 a while back). arrived home to day to a blank screen.

I've tried a factory default with no luck.

Connected to the TV with only an HDMI cable for both audio and video.

annoying.

[craigkendall]

I got my box the other night and was prompted to upgrade when I first plugged it in.

So all I've ever known was the screen going black during the opening video and staying black.

The workaround I've found while I await the update to fix it is to switch to a different video source on my home theater receiver and then switch back to the boxee's source. The projector then displays the home screen successfully.

Initially I could not get any videos to play but after resetting my resolution to 720p (an interesting task because after setting to 720p and pressing test and set or whatever that option was it went blank and I could not see the OK or cancel button to lock it in... quickly switched video sources to see the screen and knew which direction to move the cursor and then pressed the button... now I'm in 720p mode) I'm able to watch most videos now.

Anxious to get back to 1080i (or 1080p if I had a new projector... grrr).

[treeless]

Both my upgrade attempts completed successfully. The two isos I found where one from the "Return to .9" thread and the other was from the link esch posted. Again, both installed successfully and neither had any impact on my ability to get anything other than a black screen after the initial boot screen. By the time I was attempting manual upgrades, I was a few days into not having any video, and so I was pretty much willing to try anything; not something I would recommend to the weak of heart (as obviously grabbing an iso of a forum and installing on your BB could have some unintended consequences).

For the sake of thoroughness I called DLink to see if they could offer anything new. First, the number I found on their website (http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=DSM-380&tab=3) has a typo in it, so it took some extra effort just to contact them. The number I found to work was 877-453-5465 (as opposed to 4565 per the website).

After patiently running through steps I indicated I had already performed, the representative arrived at the same conclusion I did: send it back.

Although I have seen comments in various threads where input switching, cable switching, power cycling, factory restoring, or some combination of these restoring video for some, it looks like if you get to where I am, she's beyond repair and you have to put her down (or send her back, as the case may be).

[craigkendall]

... I'm wondering how long we wait before we send these back. Set to 720p and doing the video source switch gets me video, but if it's a defect in the box how will we ever know?

[pwnb0t]

It's probably a combination of the TV reporting information differently than other TVs and Boxee not being able to handle that right now. I imagine they'll have a fix for it soon.

I had a similar issue that I was able to resolve by replugging the hdmi cable.

http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=22382