Xbox Series X, NVIDIA GPUs may hit black screen with buggy HDMI 2.1 AV receivers
A black screen awaits gamers with certain AV receivers from Panasonic.
What you need to know
- An HDMI 2.1 bug is causing certain hardware to show a black screen instead of content.
- The bug affects Panasonic chips in receivers from Denon, Marantz, and Yamaha.
- The issue only appears to affect the Xbox Series X and NVIDIA Ampere graphics cards when attempting to output at 4K and 120Hz.
Some gamers looking forward to 4K gaming at 120Hz may be disappointed due to an HDMI 2.1 bug. According to Heise Online, a bug affecting HDMI 2.1 output on select AV receivers causes a black screen to appear when people try to enable 4K and 120Hz from an Xbox Series X or NVIDIA Ampere graphics cards.
The bug appears to affect HDMI 2.1 chips from Panasonic, which are in AV receivers from Denon, Marantz, and Yamaha. The bug seems to only affect specific hardware, not just HDMI 2.1 chips in general.
The black screens also seem to only appear for people using the Xbox Series X or NVIDIA Ampere GPUs. The bug does not appear to cause the same issue for the PlayStation 5.
It's important to note that the Xbox Series X is not commercially available at this time, so the bug is difficult to confirm.
While it won't deliver the same experience, a workaround to this bug is to lower your resolution or your refresh rate to 4K and 60Hz. Tom's Hardware also highlights that you can connect your AV receiver to your TV's eARC HDMI port and connect the affected device to your TV. In this setup, the TV handles everything except for audio while the AV receiver takes care of audio.
Panasonic should start making new HDMI 2.1 chips that aren't affected by this issue by 2021. According to Tom's Hardware, you'll have to replace your AV receiver if it is affected by this bug, which is unfortunate.
Official Sound United has a response regarding the HDMI 2.1 bug (via Audioholics):
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Yamaha also shared an official response regarding the issue:
Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com.