We’ve been watching concerts that are streamed by SFJazz.org. These are concerts that they recorded in the past and that are now streamed for a fee to help support musicians. So what I do is to set up my laptop (Windows 10, 12GB RAM, bought in the past couple of years), and plug it into my TV via an HDMI port. The TV is definitely NOT a smart TV. I bought it in about 2006, and see no reason to replace it unless and until it has a meltdown. It’s smart enough to have an HDMI port, but that’s about it.
Anyway, during the concerts, the TV screen will suddenly go dark, but perhaps with brief spurts of sound. If I unplug the connecting cable for a few seconds and then plug it back in, we’re back in business. This happens two or three times during the one hour duration of the concert.
Oh, and the laptop is connected to the router via wi-fi, not direct cable connection.
Any ideas as to where the problem lies and how to remedy it?
This is a hard problem to diagnose based on limited information, but FWIW I can offer two WAGs.
One, if I understand correctly, the screen actually goes black, and disconnecting and reconnecting the HDMI cable fixes the problem for a while. This strongly suggests an HDMI issue and nothing to do with the WiFi. You might consider swapping out the HDMI cable for a better one, preferably one that is as short as possible. I had a similar problem with a media player, though the symptom was that intermittently – every few days – the TV would display an HDMI protocol error message and hang. I fixed that problem by replacing the cheap HDMI cable that came with the player with a good one from Monoprice – not expensive, but good quality – and never had the problem since.
Another (less likely) possibility is just that some laptop HDMI interfaces don’t play nice with some TVs. Here is an example.. You might want to Google around and see if any such problems have been reported with your laptop. There’s probably not much you can do about it unless there happens to be a BIOS update that fixes it.
The cable is as short as they come, but I can’t speak to the quality. It’s not a problem that I’m going to spend a lot of money (or time) on, but I’m hoping for an obvious solution.
Do you only have one HDMI port on your TV? If not, did you try the other ports? My TV is a cheap one, and the HDMI ports are crap so I have to keep switching them around to watch an HDMI connected video source.
When the screen goes black on your TV, does it also do so on the laptop? If it does, you might want to check Power Options in Control Panel to see if maybe you’re just hitting a screen time-out interval. Also, is your laptop running on AC or is it using battery power? Time-out intervals under battery power are almost always shorter than the intervals when the laptop is plugged into AC power.
Just turn on the TV on the HDMI input and tell the computer to connect. You should the Roku as one of the choices and it should pop up on the Roku to confirm.
We’ve done this for Zoom meetings including a virtual baby shower for my niece’s baby.
Is the cable the same one that you plug into the roku, or a different cable? If the former, and you say the roku works fine, it’s not the cable. If the latter, try using the roku’s cable and see if the problem resolves; if it does, it’s the laptop’s cable.
Good suggestion. Unfortunately, the Roku cable is only about 12" long, so I can’t use it as a permanent solution, and the problem is intermittent enough to where I can’t stand and hold the laptop that long to wait for it. Think I’ll just order a new one.
You can use the Roku as a wireless receiver from the laptop. No need to unplug the HDMI as you’re bypassing the cable completely. Easier and the video dropouts may disappear.