I have a brand new Yamaha receiver with 4 in, 1 out HDMI ports. I have hooked up my Scientific Atlanta Cable/DVR running into it via HDMI. I have an HDMI connection from the receiver to my Panasonic plasma as well. While watching TV, the video is fine but the audio (from the receiver) randomly drops out for a split second. It never drops out for more than a second or so and it is totally random no matter what channel I'm watching or how loud it is. I have tried switching to a different HDMI cable and that didn't help. Any thoughts?
Check to see if this problem occurs while playing a DVD or other sources. If the problem only exist while using the cable box only try unplugging the cable box while it is on, wait 15 second and replug it in to reboot the box. If this doesn't work you could try component cables with a digital connection to see if the HDMI is not getting a good hand shake.
Believe it or not, I went with the "power down the DVR" option and it worked! I unplugged the unit for about a minute, plugged everything back in and haven't had any problems since then - knock on wood! Thanks!
I think your audio problem is the fact your cable TV supplier does not support HDMI hookups..try replacing the HDMI from box to receiver with composite ones and separate digital audio out and see if sound is better..shouldnt be much change, if at all, in picture quality..the lack of support is found all over US and Canada, it happened to my girlfriends hookups and the component cables solved the problems..good luck...Chris O.
for what it's worth I have a similar problem with an onkyo receiver and direcTV DVR. It turns out (after a LOT of toubleshooting) that it's an issue with decoding DD.
If you want to test this theory for yourself, go into the cable box setup screens, and turn off Dolby Digital output. Have it use straight PCM/stereo, and just tell the AVR to use some form of PLII or something for the time being to similate multi-channel.