Westinghouse and the blinking PS3: HDCP gone awry?

[wraggster]

Some PlayStation 3 users who play on Westinghouse 1080p screens might have noticed a blinking problem when loading up their games, wherein no sound comes up and the screen's imagery blinks off and on. Popular Mechanics has been following the story and trying to deduce the culprit of this problem.

The blinking phenomenon stems from High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection, or HDCP, a form of DRM for signals that run through HDMI cables. Initially, Westinghouse VP of Marketing Rey Roque explained that the issue was firmware within some of their television sets but has now retracted that assertion, placing the blinking blame on the PlayStation 3 itself. Roque notes, "Westinghouse products are fully compliant with the HDMI and HDCP specs."

Westinghouse and Sony reportedly met yesterday to discuss the issue, but Popular Mechanics went ahead and offered a quick-and-dirty fix to the problem: simply unplug HDMI cable, wait a few seconds, and plug it back in. Video of the phenomenon and its quick fix is embedded after the break.

via joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/01/25/westinghouse-and-the-blinking-ps3-hdcp-gone-awry/)

Video Here --> http://www.youtube.com/v/Gj_gEwHOQEI

[acn010]

wtf? it never happened to me, thanks for the warning...
but, plug and unplug? what kind of fix is that? lol

[DCergo]

Right now I'm still more inclined to believe it's a Westinghouse problem.

[VFerg]

Dam, when I started reading this article I thought it was going to be the same problem my tv does sometimes but after watching the video I see its not even close... I have heard of this type of problem before with other HDMI devices and do believe it has to do with the way HDMI interacts with both devices. My problem is when I start a game on my Samsung tv it goes to black for the first second then flickers a million particles of snow like when you go to a channel with nothing on it but they look a lot smaller sorta like high def snow then goes back to black then does it one more time then starts the game fine. My boss told me that his tv does that sometimes to with his dvd player hooked up to HDMI, he says its normal for it to do that and that its upscalling from a lower resolution to a higher one. I dont mind it but would like it even more if it did not happen! Oh yea a few times when I first got my PS3 it would not play sound on games until I exited the game and restarted. Those are my problems, nothing big but somewhat annoying. Anybody else have issues like this?

[Daistaar]

My Westinghouse does the same thing. I got it on Black Friday 2006 at Best Buy a week after getting my PS3 so I figured everything would work fine. It does 480i/p, 720p, and 1080i/p, although 1080p was never advertised, all in 42 glorious inches. Firstly, GORGEOUS. 1080p is frickin' beautiful. If it weren't for the blinking screen it'd be perfect. To be honest I'd rather deal with the annoyance rather than risk another hdtv that may look crap. Also, Westinghouse seems to be the only brand to have issues with the PS3. HDMi is far from perfect, but the PS3 is the only device raising eyebrows with the brand. BTW, soo many people pass up the brand and dismiss it as crap because they've never heard of it. They were formally White Westinghouse, and the LCD HDTVs are amazing. Don't be fooled by SD quality signals running in bestbuys and stores as you won't be seeing the potential of hdtvs in actual High-Def.

My workaround that works:
power off the HDTV, then power back up.

Workaround that didn't work:
PS3 HDMI autoconfig by holding power button on boot.