Jeff wants to extend the range of HDMI to other parts of his house. But when he does, he starts to lose signal. What can he do? Leo says that Baluns are good for that. It stands for "Balanced/Unbalanced" and it will convert HDMI to ethernet and back to HDMI so that he can stretch it hundreds of feet with no signal loss at all. Jeff should check out Monoprice.
Christian recently bought a Lightning to HDMI cable to connect his phone to his Roku, but it doesn't work with Hulu. It only plays the sound, not the picture. Leo says it sounds like it isn't HDCP compliant. Copy Protection is probably what he's running up against. Hulu's site says it doesn't support it. There may be a workaround, though. He should try scrubbing through the timeline. According to the chatroom, 9/10 times it will bring the video back. Another solution is to log out and log back in. But if he has a Roku device, why not just use the Roku app?
Rick wants to know how he can bring his Amazon Fire Stick with him when he travels and plug it into the TV where he stays. Leo says that older TVs will require an HDMI to Composite converter, but newer TVs have HDMI ports. So he could just plug them in. Many hotel Wi-Fi hotspots require captive portal registration to use it, and the signal really isn't that good. Also some older TVs may not be HDCP compliant.
Tom is having an issue with his Samsung 4K TV. The HDMI through his AV Receiver drops and he has to reacquire it. Leo says that it all comes down to his source. There's a feature called Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) that allows a streaming box to switch his AV Receiver automatically. It's annoying and happens to Leo all the time. So he should check his source in the AV Receiver. Then he should disable CEC everywhere. Samsung calls this feature "AnyNet Plus."
Rich has an old HDTV that is losing its ability to play audio until it warms up. It works better on analog, but not on HDMI. Leo suspects that the TV's digital to analog converter is going bad on it. One way to test this is to plug in some headphones and see if the problem persists. If it does, then he'll know it's the converter.
Paul has an IOGear KVM switch to plug in his laptop to connect it to his desktop monitor and keyboard. Leo says he'll want to be sure he uses HDMI for the video connection. But he can certainly use it with his laptop and his desktop at the same time. He'll also need additional cables.
Mike says that Blu-ray players have dual HDMI ports because some legacy receivers don't support the higher bit rate HDMI 2.0a standard. So you can plug into the older HDMI port instead. But then you lose 4K capability.
Vino has a problem with his TV not getting the signal from DirecTV. Leo says it sounds like a bad handshake via HDMI. The settings may be wrong. He may have to change out the HDMI cable, though. Vino should also check to see if he has the most recent firmware.
Steve can't seem to get his Amazon Fire Stick to work on his TV, but it works fine in his other TV. Leo says that the older TV may not have the latest HDMI standard and so the Fire Stick can't "handshake" with the TV. There could be a firmware update to his TV, so he should look into that. He could also try unplugging his TV, let it set for a minute, then plug in his Fire Stick and turn it back on. That way it could handshake from scratch. The other issue may be copy protection. If his TV is old enough that it isn't HDCP compliant, it could be that the Fire Stick won't support it.
Kent bought a sound bar for his older Samsung TV. He uses a Chromecast and Roku Stick with it, but he can't get audio to work. Scott Wilkinson says that the optical out for the old Samsung is probably only for the TV's internal tuner since it's older than the advent of streaming media. There could be a setting in the menus, but he's better off going with HDMI input.
