PlayStation 3 HDMI Stopped Working on my TV

June 23, 2009 porkchop 4 comments

This is a story about my PS3 HDMI port suddenly not working on my TV after working for 1 year. I will describe this, since most people will probably be affected by this, and to help you, if this happens, so you don’t waste as much time as I did on this problem, and even end up paying for a person to come out and look at your TV.

A couple weeks ago my PlayStation 3 connected by HDMI to my receiver (receiver has HDMI switching) stopped working unexpectedly. This is how I have everything setup, I have my Satellite receiver connected with HDMI to my receiver and PS3, the receiver has HDMI switching, and I use optical cable for both connected to my receiver for sound. What happened one day was that my PS3 HDMI did not work, but my receiver worked fine connected through HDMI. First thing I did, I connected the PS3 to my BENQ 24inch LCD monitor, which I reviewed here earlier, through HDMI to test to see if the HDMI port on the ps3 was broken, do this if you have this problem to see if the port is working or not. The PS3 worked fine on my BENQ monitor, so it was not the HDMI port on the PS3, it worked fine. The next step I did, was I got the component cables that came with the PS3 and connected it to my TV and messed around with settings to see if the TV could find the HDMI, but it couldn’t connect. I kept trying this for a long time, and nothing worked, with the video settings on the PS3, I even removed the Hard drive, unplugged the PS3, and reformatted it, still did not work on my TV. The weird part about this was that, my satellite receiver worked fine through HDMI. I even connected it with the cable that worked from my satellite receiver with the PS3 directly, skipped the receiver did not work. I tried everything possible and nothing worked, so I knew something was wrong with my TV and the PS3. And lastly, a friend brought over a PS3 that worked on his TV through HDMI to test it here and that PS3 did not work, to just check if it was a corrupted firmware driver or something. I still had warranty on my TV (I bought the extended warranty) and called the warranty company, the technician who came said that they usually replace the main-board of the TV when this happens, he didn’t do much testing, since he knew me already and knew that I have experience with electronics and technology, but he of course knew what they usually do when this happens. He said he would call me back after talking to Toshiba, my TV manufacturer, well the next day he called me back and said that my TV was not compatible with the HDMI on the PS3, since the PS3 update, since my TV is not HDCP compatible, since it is an older TV, and it uses HDMI 1.1. The technician also said that there was no updated board for my TV that would make this work, or software to flash it with, and said to just connect through component cables. So I ended up buying a pair of component cables (component cables transfer HD through red, green and blue, they look like composite cables) and it worked on my TV, so now that is how I’m getting my signal. Composite cables can only transfer 1080i signal not 1080p, but my TV is only 1080i so there is no big loss there. So my fix was to buy $25 dollar Sony component cables and it worked, and I’m getting a great picture just like HDMI.

So for people who come across this error, there is nothing that can be done, unless Sony releases some new firmware that will fix this, so older TV’s can use HDMI, it’s pretty annoying how it worked before, and now it doesn’t, and there is noway to rollback your PS3 Firmware, unless you send it back to Sony, but then you can’t play any games on it really, you will need that new Firmware. There is also some people who see no difference between HDMI and component cables, I did not see any difference at all, HDMI though has more bandwidth that it can transmit, it is a better cable. Component is still HD, so you will be fine with using it if your HDMI does not work, and all HD TV’s have component cable connections in the back.