Skip to content A black screen, or the TV says no signal
Sound but no picture, or the TV dropping out entirely, usually comes down to one setting.
These look like app failures and are usually a handshake between the box and the panel.
The TV goes black or says no signal when playback starts
The TV is refusing the refresh rate the box asked for. Turn off Match frame rate under Settings, then Playback, and try the same channel. If it plays, that was it. mtivi already prefers whole rates like 60 over 59.94 because some panels refuse the fractional ones, but a few refuse more than that.
Sound plays but the picture is black
| Try | Why |
|---|---|
| Another channel | Separates a stream problem from a device problem. |
| Decoder Mode, Prefer Software Extensions | The video decoder may be failing silently on this format. |
| Video Surface, under Playback | A small number of boxes show flicker or black on one surface type and are fine on the other. |
| A different HDMI cable or port | 4K HDR needs a cable and a port that can carry it. This is the fix more often than people expect. |
The picture is there but washed out
That is the TV’s HDR handling. Set the HDMI input to its full or enhanced format in the TV’s own settings.
If the whole TV drops out for a second on every channel change, that is the panel resyncing to a new resolution or rate. Turning off frame-rate matching stops it, at the cost of a little judder on films.
