# Bolt started to act up. Fails to handshake HDMI on reboot



## scsiguy72 (Nov 25, 2003)

I have an older Bolt, over the air only, worked fine for years, lately I started to lose all of my channels and the only way to get them back is a reboot. However, when it reboots the hdmi will not handshake with my video amp (onkyo) 

The only way I can make it work is to unplug HDMI, reboot TiVo bolt, wait till it’s fully booted up and plug HDMI in again Then it woks about 3-4 days and I have to repeat the process. 

any thoughts.


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## shamilian (Mar 27, 2003)

I have had hdmi cables go bad over time. Try replacing the cable first.

The boot hdmi handshake is 480 and wont work on all displays, make sure your receiver / display can accept 480...

I would expect the Tivo to boot even without display and changing the hdmi inputs should force a new handshake, without physical connection change.


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## scsiguy72 (Nov 25, 2003)

Thanks..I have been working on this a while now and have decided it’s either a bad (cheap) cable or a bad HDMI port.

I changed the cable and it was different, but still not right. it would handshake and then randomly drop signal, then come back 20 minutes later, if I did nothing. 
I learned that if I wiggle the HDMI cable from the back of the bolt, signal comes back.

I haven’t opened it up yet to look at the HDMI port. do you know if there has been a problem with them?


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## ChurchillWS (Jan 25, 2017)

I think I am having a similar issue, except my Bolt is a cable one. The only thing that has changed recently was that I received a new TV on Tuesday, a Sony 77A80J. It worked fine the day I received it and until around 14:30 today. I went to turn on the TV today around 19:30 and the TV was not receiving an HDMI signal. I rebooted the Tivo and it restarted, but after the Only a Few Minutes now message nothing happens. I rebooted a few more times and then it started to just show snow. It seems like the Tivo is recording fine as I can see and play recordings from my Android devices, but there is only snow direct from the Tivo to the TV.

I tried swapping the HDMI cables, but that didn't work permanently. Initially it worked for about 10 seconds, but then went back to snow.

I tried @scsiguy72's solution of unplugging the HDMI cable, rebooting, and reinserting the HDMI cable after the reboot and it seems to be working fine now <knock on wood>, but I'm worried the issue may present itself again.


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## MrDell (Jul 8, 2012)

ChurchillWS said:


> I think I am having a similar issue, except my Bolt is a cable one. The only thing that has changed recently was that I received a new TV on Tuesday, a Sony 77A80J. It worked fine the day I received it and until around 14:30 today. I went to turn on the TV today around 19:30 and the TV was not receiving an HDMI signal. I rebooted the Tivo and it restarted, but after the Only a Few Minutes now message nothing happens. I rebooted a few more times and then it started to just show snow. It seems like the Tivo is recording fine as I can see and play recordings from my Android devices, but there is only snow direct from the Tivo to the TV.
> 
> I tried swapping the HDMI cables, but that didn't work permanently. Initially it worked for about 10 seconds, but then went back to snow.
> 
> I tried @scsiguy72's solution of unplugging the HDMI cable, rebooting, and reinserting the HDMI cable after the reboot and it seems to be working fine now <knock on wood>, but I'm worried the issue may present itself again.


I have a new Sony oled TV paired with a Bolt…. Every so often I have to restart my TV (hold down power button until restart screen shows) and that corrects the problem when HDMI handshake issues occur. After doing that I am all set for quite some time.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

The Bolt's have always been picky with their HDMI handshake when renegotiating, especially if you use standby.
My solution has been to just set them to 1080p only output if I use standby and it's worked very well, but having standby off also helps for the one I have 4K enabled on.


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