HDMI to AV converter not working

skid777

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I have an older Samsung HDTV, and all three of the HDMI input ports on them are shot - they are so loose I can’t get a connection where the picture isn’t completely distorted.

I talked to a guy in the Geek Squad at Best Buy who seemed to know what he is talking about. He said they can’t repair them but all I needed was a HDMI to composite AV converter. I bought one, but I is not working.

I have Xfinity cable, so I am running the HDMI out from the cable box into the converter. It has the red/white/yellow outputs that I then run into the AV inputs on the TV. The converter runs off power from a USB plug and has the PAL/NTSC switch. But when I switch the TV input to AV it is just blank - says it can’t find an input device. I’ve tried both PAL and NTSC to be sure, but neither works.

Does anyone know what’s up? Should this work?

Thanks.
 
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'AV' is just a generic term for an audio-video input so make sure your TV's use of the term refers to the same one as the converter. Yellow video with red and white audio would typically be the colour scheme for composite video.

If you're trying to watch commercial broadcasts then you may be falling foul of copy protection. Your converter would need to support HDCP for that to work.
 
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'AV' is just a generic term for an audio-video input so make sure your TV's use of the term refers to the same one as the converter. Yellow video with red and white audio would typically be the colour scheme for composite video.

If you're trying to watch commercial broadcasts then you may be falling foul of copy protection. Your converter would need to support HDCP for that to work.
By copy protection you mean the signal is scrambled? Before the ports went bad I was just using a standard 5 dollar HDMI cable from the box to the TV. And now I am running a coaxial cable instead. That works fine as well, although coaxial only carries SD so it looks terrible on the 55" screen. But I can't imagine there is any kind of unscrambling going on in an old coaxial cable.
 
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The scrambling is only applied to the higher quality signal output over HDMI, the HDCP licence terms allow output over lower quality interfaces to be unencrypted.

The unscrambling is done by the devices in the chain such as source, converter and display, the cables have nothing to do with it.
 
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By copy protection you mean the signal is scrambled? Before the ports went bad I was just using a standard 5 dollar HDMI cable from the box to the TV. And now I am running a coaxial cable instead. That works fine as well, although coaxial only carries SD so it looks terrible on the 55" screen. But I can't imagine there is any kind of unscrambling going on in an old coaxial cable.
In case you didn't realise, you're only going to get an SD signal via a composite connection anyway, so it may not look that different to the coaxial connection you're currently using.
 
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Well it is supposed to. Specs say it supports up to 1080p. And the Geek Squad guy told me it would be HD. Of course he also said it would work.
 
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Well it is supposed to. Specs say it supports up to 1080p. And the Geek Squad guy told me it would be HD. Of course he also said it would work.

It might well support a 1080p input but since you are converting to composite you will downgrade the signal to 525i (interlaced). That’s the same quality as the coax as @mikej states.

The only way to get an HD signal with your broken tv is to get a relatively expensive hdmi to digital converter (might not be able to in your area) and pass the signal on your coax.

However, you would be better off putting the money towards a new tv if you can’t repair this one
 
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Well it is supposed to. Specs say it supports up to 1080p. And the Geek Squad guy told me it would be HD. Of course he also said it would work.

No way. If the out input isn’t in HD the feed won’t show in HD. Both in and out inputs need to be HD.
 
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