Strato V black screen and audio cutout issues

[MikeKobb]

started having issues when set 60. Then I set to 24. That works fine but the UI is laggy. Setting to 60 and 13.5 Gbps seems to work great.

What sort of issues did you have set to 60?

 

[Packers]

What sort of issues did you have set to 60?

It worked fine for a day or so, and then the blank screen started appearing again when exiting a movie. The TV lost HDMI connection with the V and the only way to reconnect was by powering off an on the V or switching ports on the TV and then back to the V.

 

[Broncowrangler]

Got it, thank you.

A bit slower to return to the OSD with it set to 60 is expected, because the player will have to change refresh rate from 24fps for the film to 60fps for the OSD, and this causes the HDMI chain to have to do a re-sync. This is not unique to Strato V or to Kaleidescape in general. I have my Apple TV set to follow the native frame rate of content and I see the same thing there, for example.

We will check on the audio and video. Please remind me: what display are you using?

Thanks. Yes I have currently set it to 60hz and limited the bandwidth to 13.5 Gbps after reading your suggestion. I’m using the 83” LG G2. Just a gentle reminder the brightness fluctuation was present during the entire course of the film, it would get exaggerated during those bright desert/chase sequences. This is with the Dolby vision version only. Audio skips have been mentioned above. There are 2 distinct events.

Addendum: directly connected to the display.

 

[MikeKobb]

It worked fine for a day or so, and then the blank screen started appearing again when exiting a movie. The TV lost HDMI connection with the V and the only way to reconnect was by powering off an on the V or switching ports on the TV and then back to the V.

Got it, thank you. I've passed that info on to the team working on this issue.

 

[MikeKobb]

Thanks. Yes I have currently set it to 60hz and limited the bandwidth to 13.5 Gbps after reading your suggestion. I’m using the 83” LG G2. Just a gentle reminder the brightness fluctuation was present during the entire course of the film, it would get exaggerated during those bright desert/chase sequences. This is with the Dolby vision version only. Audio skips have been mentioned above. There are 2 distinct events.

Addendum: directly connected to the display.

One more question: when you are playing those scenes with a direct connection to your LG, which audio track does the Strato V say is selected? (You can see this by pressing the up arrow during playback, then moving to the right to Audio.)

 

[Broncowrangler]

One more question: when you are playing those scenes with a direct connection to your LG, which audio track does the Strato V say is selected? (You can see this by pressing the up arrow during playback, then moving to the right to Audio.)

Atmos (TrueHD). The same is also indicated through the receiver. All channels engaged.

 

[MikeKobb]

Thanks. You're going direct into the TV and then eARC back to the receiver?

 

[Broncowrangler]

Thanks. You're going direct into the TV and then eARC back to the receiver?

Yes direct to Tv and eArc back to the receiver.

Fwiw, this is the only component plugged into the TV since I was experiencing a lot of issues when it was being routed through my A1H.

 

[rafaelsmith]

I am not experiencing the issue and I am 99% sure I am running this active cable:

Amazon.com

To add, When I upgraded my projector from an Epson 6040UB to the Sony XW6000ES and KSCAPE, I had to upgrade to this cable. The last cable I had was another cheap-o 18gbps item and I was getting blackouts and pink images like some people are reporting. "Upgrading" to a better cheap-o cable was the fix.

I know my cheap-o cables are not recommended which begs the questions as to why would someone drop $10k on a system only to cheap out on a cable...Well ladies and gentleman, it is hot in my attic in August. This was the only working cable that was available for same day delivery last summer when I was doing the install. It was supposed to be a band-aid, but it worked so well, I do not feel like getting back up there any time soon.

Do you have a injector on that cable?

 

[rafaelsmith]

The main reason I currently have a passive HDMI cable from AVR to Projector is because the the length was less than 15ft and my understanding was that active cables were only needed for greater lengths.

The Strato V is the only device ive had any HDMI issues with.

 

[Jin-X]

Hello all,

First, let me apologize for being a couple of days late in responding to this thread. My attention was elsewhere late last week and I missed some posts here. Also, parts of this message will be cross-posted in a couple of threads so that folks will see it where it’s relevant to them.

I’m going to start with the most important thing: the issues mentioned in this thread are among a handful of issues that are being actively investigated at very high priority by our engineering team. We are committed to resolving them as soon as possible. Everybody from the CEO on down is aware and focused on getting them solved.

Now, let me say a little bit more about what’s going on, and towards the bottom of this post there are some suggestions for workarounds that should help until we have direct solutions.

The issue with the screen going to black after playback falls into a category called “interoperability.” In other words, issues that crop up when the player is connected to certain other components like receivers or displays, or sometimes combinations of receivers and displays. The occasional signal drops may be interop related, or they may be cable related. More on that below, but first more about interoperability.

Part of the development process of any new A/V component is interoperability testing. We’ve been doing interop testing throughout the development of Strato V, with a variety of equipment. Testing has been done in a laboratory environment, through industry interoperability (“plugfest”) events, and through alpha and beta testing in people’s homes. Contrary to speculation posted here, this testing has involved components at many price points — not just high-end flagship products. We had a Marantz processor as part of our laboratory testing setup, and while we did find one minor interop issue with that processor, we did not encounter the black screen issue. We have industry contacts with Denon/Marantz, and we will work with them as needed as we have done in the past.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to test every possible model and software revision of AV receiver/processor, display, distribution system, and cable. And so, issues can and do appear after release that need to be identified and addressed.

To that end, we do need a bit of help from you. Our players log and report diagnostic information back to us, and so if we know that your player is exhibiting an interoperability issue, our support team can flag it to the engineering team, which can use that logged information in helping identify what the root cause is. So, if you are having an issue with your player, please open a support ticket by emailing support@kaleidescape.com if you have not done so already. Provide your player serial number and a description of the issue. It's helpful if you can tell us the make and model of equipment connected to your player (i.e. your audio processor/receiver, your display, and any other intermediate gear like video processors, distribution systems, HDMI extenders, etc.)

I'd also like to publicly apologize to @Broncowrangler, whose support experience hasn't been the best. His initial contact to support was accidentally closed as a duplicate by a support team member who mistook it for a different message, and so that cost a significant amount of time in getting an initial response.

I do want to set expectations here, too -- as described by others, once you have an issue in to support, if that issue needs to be escalated to the engineering team, it can take some time for the team to investigate the issue and either come back with a solution, or with a request to the customer for additional information or troubleshooting. There are weekly meetings between support and engineering to go over all of the cases that have been escalated to engineering. Periodic status updates back to the customer are not part of that process. We'll take that as a suggestion, though.

Now, some things you can try, if you're having one of the issues mentioned here.

As already described in this thread, multiple people have reported being able to work around the black screen at the end of playback by setting the onscreen display’s refresh rate to a fixed value rather than using the automatic setting. We’ve had reports that both 60Hz and 24Hz work. I would personally suggest trying 60 first because the OSD animation will be smoother. You can access this setting through your system’s browser interface. If you don’t know how to access your browser interface, here’s a support article: https://support.kaleidescape.com/article/Accessing-the-Browser-Interface

Once in the browser interface, go to the Settings tab, select the Components sub-tab, and then click the “Settings” button for the affected Strato V player. This will open a popup window, defaulted to the Video tab. Click “Show Advanced Settings”, change the popup under “OSD Refresh Rate”, and then scroll to the bottom of the window and click OK.

Momentary dropouts during playback are often caused by issues with HDMI communication, and these are frequently related to the cable. If you are not using the cable that came with your player, please try using that cable. Kaleidescape players can be pretty demanding source devices, since we’re sending high-quality video and lossless audio, which requires maximum bandwidth from the cable.

If the supplied cable is not long enough, we’d suggest that you try another cable from the same product line. You can find them here: Pixelgen Design

Minimally, please ensure that you are using a high quality “Ultra High Speed” HDMI cable.

Also, if you have multiple devices in your HDMI signal chain, as Jim mentioned, it can often be more difficult to identify where a problem lies. A good strategy is to start by connecting the player directly to the display. If everything works well there, re-introduce other components, one at a time.

Finally, one thing that can help many HDMI compatibility issues is to limit the bandwidth sent over the cable. If your Strato V is on its default setting of "Allow Display Mode Changes", then most film content is going to be played at ~24 frames per second. This doesn't require the full bandwidth of the cable, and so setting the maximum bandwidth to 13.5Gbps may improve robustness. This is in the same Advanced Settings group mentioned above, in the section called "4K Ultra HD Support". Choose the 13.5Gbps option, then scroll to the bottom and click OK.

I’d be glad to help as I have a lot of the components in question:

77in LG G2
Denon x3800H
Zeskit Maya, Zeskit Lite, Monoprice braided, Series X MS Ultra High Speed cables
RTX 4080 Super PC so I know the cables work flawlessly with 4K/120/12b/RGB/HDR/VRR 48Gbps direct to tv or 10 bit direct to Denon.
Panasonic UB820, Apple TV and Firestick 4k Max

I even have a SHARC V2 eARC extractor so I can test that extra configuration as well on top of all the other ones, plus spare time to do the testing.

I just need someone to donate a Strato V

 

[Broncowrangler]

@MikeKobb I experienced some more audio cuts while watching the “chasing down dementus” scene from Furiosa. I think Furiosa is super glitchy.

Meanwhile I had no issues/ anomalies with both audio and video, when I watched 3:10 to Yuma (Dolby Vision/ DTS:X). I watched the entire movie without a single incident.

 

[Movie owner]

Anyone have an MadVR Envy2 setup along with the V and seeing this OP's listed issues?

FWIW: I realize KScape wanted to announce this before the show, but now are probably having regrets with this early buggy release (downloads & hardware).

 

[MikeKobb]

@MikeKobb I experienced some more audio cuts while watching the “chasing down dementus” scene from Furiosa. I think Furiosa is super glitchy.

Appreciate the update. We have been testing Furiosa today. No audio glitches for us, so I suspect something that is equipment-specific. We have seen some variations in the brightness, although it depends on the TV’s picture mode, so this may be a case of the TV doing something less than ideal. We’re still looking at it, though. Will update further when we have more information.

FWIW: I realize KScape wanted to announce this before the show, but now are probably having regrets with this early buggy release (downloads & hardware).

Most customers are having no issues at all. There do seem to be some interoperability issues with certain A/V components that we’re working to resolve. As mentioned earlier in the thread, there’s essentially no way to test every possible equipment combination in advance, so the best we can do is to resolve these issues for our customers as quickly as we can.

 

[rafaelsmith]

Appreciate the update. We have been testing Furiosa today. No audio glitches for us, so I suspect something that is equipment-specific. We have seen some variations in the brightness, although it depends on the TV’s picture mode, so this may be a case of the TV doing something less than ideal. We’re still looking at it, though. Will update further when we have more information.



Most customers are having no issues at all. There do seem to be some interoperability issues with certain A/V components that we’re working to resolve. As mentioned earlier in the thread, there’s essentially no way to test every possible equipment combination in advance, so the best we can do is to resolve these issues for our customers as quickly as we can.

@MikeKobb appreciate the updates. Since my Marantz Cinema 30 seems to be one of the effected ones...if there is anything I can do to help with testing let me know.. Thou, pretty sure I have exhausted everything I can do on my end. Hopefully my Strato v logs show something.

 

[Broncowrangler]

Thanks for the update @MikeKobb. I’m sort of relieved to know that the brightness variations with Furiosa was not exclusive to me. Hopefully it gets sorted out soon.

However the audio cutout has been replicated several times. I (re) downloaded furiosa several times; both HDR10 and Dolby Vision versions, but the audio skip at 1:13:27 (I noted the exact time stamp) is quite jarring and happens every single time. The other skip around the 50 min mark is hit or miss. I have had it happen maybe 7/10 times. It’s not so evident but still there.

No other audio drops at any point apart from that chase mentioned scene (mentioned earlier) which happened once.

Fwiw, I don’t know if this would help but I have observed that the older titles which were given the Dolby Vision treatment are faring better than the newer releases with Dolby vision out of the gates.

 

[rafaelsmith]

Thanks for the update @MikeKobb. I’m sort of relieved to know that the brightness variations with Furiosa was not exclusive to me. Hopefully it gets sorted out soon.

However the audio cutout has been replicated several times. I (re) downloaded furiosa several times; both HDR10 and Dolby Vision versions, but the audio skip at 1:13:27 (I noted the exact time stamp) is quite jarring and happens every single time. The other skip around the 50 min mark is hit or miss. I have had it happen maybe 7/10 times. It’s not so evident but still there.

No other audio drops at any point apart from that chase mentioned scene (mentioned earlier) which happened once.

Fwiw, I don’t know if this would help but I have observed that the older titles which were given the Dolby Vision treatment are faring better than the newer releases with Dolby vision out of the gates.

I do not have Furiosa but thus far every movie (which to be frank have only been about 5) that we have watched completely since getting the Strato V have not exhibited any audio drop outs that noticed.

Lets see movies we have watched from start to finish:
-The Batman - HDR10
-The Flash - HDR10
-Transformers 1 - DV
-Battleship - HDR10
-Top Gun: Maverick - HDR10
-Ready Player One - HDR10

Tonight is movie night with step daughter....Quiet Place - Day One - HDR10

This Friday is Twisters - HDR10

I will try to keep closer "ear" to see if I notice anything.

 

[Broncowrangler]

@MikeKobb, I would also like to throw in the following for your consideration.

I tried several permutations/ combinations while watching Furiosa to determine which mode worked best for an unhindered experience:

A) Auto (default) HDR range exhibited lot of brightness variations but the PQ was most pleasing to the eyes. When it decided to behave, it was drop dead gorgeous.

B) LLDV: Exhibited no brightness variations whatsoever and played well with the source content. However the PQ appeared slightly dull/bland compared to Auto.

C) HDR10 version download of Furiosa: Almost identical experience as LLDV.

Audio cut out at 1:13:27 present in all scenarios.

Therefore if I had to watch this again I would prefer DV (auto), hopefully there is a resolution soon.

 

[Broncowrangler]

I do not have Furiosa but thus far every movie (which to be frank have only been about 5) that we have watched completely since getting the Strato V have not exhibited any audio drop outs that noticed.

Lets see movies we have watched from start to finish:
-The Batman - HDR10
-The Flash - HDR10
-Transformers 1 - DV
-Battleship - HDR10
-Top Gun: Maverick - HDR10
-Ready Player One - HDR10

Tonight is movie night with step daughter....Quiet Place - Day One - HDR10

This Friday is Twisters - HDR10

I will try to keep closer "ear" to see if I notice anything.

Quiet place day one was flawless. No problems or issues. Great HT experience, highly recommended.

 

[HarperVision]

DV 5 is an older profile which was designed for older Sony TVs that could not do TV-Led tone mapping. Designed for pre 2021 Sony TVs.

Unfortunately that's the only profile that will work with all DV capable displays and projectors.

If so, that is an unfortunate assumption for them to have made or designed around.

Why is this “unfortunate “? There is absolutely nothing wrong with Profile 5 DV and is a viable and current DV format.

What evidence do you have that shows this is somehow inferior, other than not having an enhancement layer which may or may not actually “enhance” the image, depending on what the device does with it.

Speaking of the enhancement layer, @Broncowrangler this is most likely what is causing your brightness fluctuations. I used to see this with Aquaman when playing my Profle 7 Blu-ray rips using LLDV. They ended up having to be converted to Profile 5/8 using a cool drag and drop tool I use.