# Bolt problem with mCable?



## geodon005 (Mar 10, 2004)

I recently purchased and installed a Marseille mCable (a USB-powered HDMI cable designed to actually improve picture quality) between my TiVo Bolt and and a Vizio P-65 4KUHD TV. I get a picture, but it blinks on and off every 2-3 seconds or so.

I wrote the following to Marseille's tech support:

I have tried the following to rectify the problem:

 reconnected the mCable and ensured all connections were made properly and securely
 tried different HDMI inputs on the TV
 tried multiple video output resolutions on the TiVo

Nothing I did had any effect on the blinking on and off. I am quite upset by this, as I can actually see the difference in picture quality with the mCable installed, but the persistent screen blinking obviously makes watching the TV impossible.

I am looking for any assistance you can provide; might it be an HDMI handshaking issue, or is it possible the cable itself is defective? 

Here was their tech support response (which came back very quickly, I might add):

We really appreciate the fact that you can enjoy the visual enhancement but obviously I'm disappointed with the blinking issue. 

Since the problem seems to be related to some handshake issues with HDMI, I would like to confirm that it is an incompatibility issue with your TIVO Bolt and not the TV. 

Can you confirm that your mCable works fine with another video source (older TIVO Box, DVD/BD player,...)? 

mCable is fully compliant with HDMI 1.4b, and HDCP 1.4. It supports elements of HDMI 2.0 such as 4K60 YUV 4:2:0, but only in pass-through. mCable does not support HDCP 2.2. Since TIVO uses HDCP 2.2 protocol to stream 4K native content then the current generation of mCable won't work for it. 

I unfortunately find a lot of issues on Bolt online (search: tivo bolt hdmi problem).

While I'm waiting for all this info I can also suggest a possible workaround for you:

- if your setup is a) or b) above, try turning off CEC on the TiVo box
- if your setup is c) above, try turning off CEC on the TiVo box and the AVR

CEC stands for Consumer Electronics Control, it is an interesting HDMI feature which allows for instance remote control commands to be passed from say your TiVo box to your TV over HDMI, or the other way around. It is however responsible for a lot of interoperability issues because every manufacturer implements it a little differently.

I'm looking forward to hearing more from you. I also seriously hope that if we can solve incompatibility issues with your TIVO bolt box, you can still find many reasons to enjoy mCable with other source devices. 

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.


As to the tech support workarounds:
 the Bolt DOES NOT have CEC (confirmed by some online research), so there is no way to turn it off
 my Vizio TV DOES have CEC, which was enabled, but even after turning it off, the blinking persisted

So no luck in getting it to work. Does anyone here have any ideas?


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

can/did you try different cable?


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## geodon005 (Mar 10, 2004)

Yes - regular HDMI cable does indeed work. However, the whole purpose of using the mCable is to improve the picture quality - which it indeed does when connecting my Roamio Pro to a different HDTV.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

geodon005 said:


> Yes - regular HDMI cable does indeed work. However, the whole purpose of using the mCable is to improve the picture quality - which it indeed does when connecting my Roamio Pro to a different HDTV.


 different tv than the Visio? maybe the Visio HDMI is faulty?


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

geodon005 said:


> Yes - regular HDMI cable does indeed work. However, the whole purpose of using the mCable is to improve the picture quality - which it indeed does when connecting my Roamio Pro to a different HDTV.


"mCable is fully compliant with HDMI 1.4b, and HDCP 1.4. It supports elements of HDMI 2.0 such as 4K60 YUV 4:2:0, but only in pass-through. mCable does not support HDCP 2.2. Since TIVO uses HDCP 2.2 protocol to stream 4K native content then the current generation of mCable won't work for it."
It sounds like that $130 HDMI cable is not compatible with the Bolt according to the manufacturer, no?
If that is the case, and switching the location of your Bolt and Roamio is not an option, it sounds like it's a very pricey something or other.


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## alevenso (May 9, 2016)

I am still confused as to why you need to use an mCable on that TV? Plug an HDMI cable into the highest quality HDMi port on the Vizio and you should get the best picture the Vizio is able to handle including 4k content -


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