Onkyo Receiver and Samsung TV

[Ed_W]

I am having a problem similar to an earlier post. My Onkyo receiver goes to standby while watching tv after about 10 minutes. My connections are from cable box via HDMI to TV and from Cable box to receiver thru another HDMI cable. There is also optical connection from TV to receiver and receiver to DVD, There is no problem when using all speakers while using the tuner on the receiver. I disconnected all speakers and set volume full up on receiver and it did not go to standby. I have replaced the cable box as I was able to update this unit at no charge. Brought receiver to Onkyo repair station and they say it tested GOOD. They did not originally want to test the speakers, but they all seem to work ok when not using the tv. Speaker wires seem ok. TV sound good without the receiver. Can the problem be with the tv or is it more likely a speaker problem?

[MrBoylan]

A receiver entering standby mode while in active use usually means a short somewhere - either in the receiver itself, in one of the speaker cables or in one of the speakers. It would be helpful to know the model receiver you are using to see if it is a known problem.

But to debug things, simplify them: instead of connecting the HDMI cable from cable box to TV and then fiberoptic from TV to receiver (which won't get you multi-channel sound from TV programs since the TV will most likely convert the 5.1 audio to 2-ch PCM), connect the cable box directly to the receiver via HDMI (assuming that your Onkyo receiver has HDMI inputs), and connect the receiver to the TV using HDMI. Also, try physically unplugging the center channel speaker and rear speakers and see if you still have the problem (note - you will need to get into your Onkyo receiver's set-up/speaker configuration menu to turn off the center and rear speakers, otherwise you will get no dialog during this test). If it works OK with two speakers, then add back the center. If it works with three then add back in the surrounds.

It's possible you have an intermittent short in the receiver or one of the speakers or one of the speaker cables but slowly building up the speaker configuration from 2 to 5 will at least allow you to narrow down where the problem is occurring.

Good luck!

-Chris