I’ve experienced my fair share of software gremlins in the products I test on a daily basis, which makes my troubleshooting at home a little easier. The usual answer is to turn something off and turn it back on, but that solution doesn’t solve every problem.
The problem I had is related to playing Dolby Vision content on my Sony OLED TV with my Sky Stream box, which results in a strange visual artefact: white spots that flash randomly when streaming content in dynamic HDR format.
The article continues below
Most people, including my housemates, would happily ignore these, but not me. Instead, I started reading through the settings of my TV and Sky Box, and swapped between HDMI sockets to ignore the problem.
Nothing seemed to work, and if I used the HDMI pass-through socket on my sound bar, the picture would cut out completely.
That’s when it dawned on me: is my HDMI cable wrong? Scrolling through the Sky forums, I found many users saying that the Stream puck comes with a high speed cable, and one post even said it’s a better idea to use the cable that comes in the box.
However, since I am not a transgressor, I did not ignore this advice. One benefit of being surrounded by AV and home cinema gear 24/7 is that I don’t run out of HDMI cable, and I quickly found a high-speed cable rated for 4K.
The latest hi-fi, home cinema and tech news, reviews, shopping advice and deals, delivered straight to your inbox.
I changed the cables, played the most recent episode, which is now very disappointing Euphoria on HBO Max in 4K Dolby Vision, and like magic, the problems were solved.
It sounds simple and obvious, but I think many of us, myself included, just think that the cables that come with our home theater products should do the job, but they don’t.
Now, I know that discussing digital cables is a controversial topic. Many of our readers have expressed disdain for the pricey “snake oil” HDMI cables that do all sorts of applications and can run hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pounds, and to be honest, I’d recommend steering clear of those too, unless i most of the home cinema lovers have the money to burn.
But your run-of-the-mill certified HDMI cable is the real deal, and one of those doesn’t have to cost all that money. I’ve seen many on Amazon for anywhere between £5 and £10, and they can be a quick, cheap and effective way to troubleshoot your home cinema setup.
And for troubleshooting purposes, it’s surprising how often a picture-related problem can be fixed by double-checking that you’re using the correct HDMI cable and socket.
While there, some TVs require you to select the correct setting for your HDMI sockets; for example, my previous Philips OLED907 and current Sony A80L TVs required me to go into input settings and select “advanced format” to enable some HDMI 2.1 features, including VRR and 120Hz playback.
This is a simple fix that’s often overlooked, so if you’re experiencing image problems yourself, do yourself a favor and check your cables before you start poking around in the settings menus.
