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My media center is connected to my TV by HDMI. When the TV is powered on or off the audio & video stutters for a second or so, presumably due to some EDID processing or something - not life threatening, but pretty annoying.

Are there any registry tweaks or driver settings that might influence this behaviour?

The video card is a GeForce 7650GS and the TV is a Panasonic PX70. I have tried a Radeon HD4350 with the same results. Unfortunately I don't have any other HDMI sinks to test this with.

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This happens when I connect an external display to my laptop, as well (VGA connection). – tnorthcutt Sep 17 '09 at 15:51
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3 Answers

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I don't think you are going to be able to get rid of the stutter as it is not caused by a fluke in the OS or anything else like that. I believe it is caused by the differeing refresh rates utilized by your multiple video sources.

For example, your TV may be 125Hz refresh rate, but your monitor may be 65 or 70Hz. Because of this variance, the system is forced to re-evaluate the video source or output everytime it is changed (thus causing a momentary stutter as it re-calibrates).

I hope this helped.

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No monitor, just the HDTV - this is a pure media center/HTPC – Lunatik Oct 1 '09 at 8:27
It's still a refresh problem. – pjemmert Oct 1 '09 at 14:28
See my answer, nothing to do with refresh. – Lunatik Jul 11 '11 at 11:28
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The problem is that turning on the TV uses more processing power and things are running to keep up. when there is no place to show video, it isn't going to waste power outputting video. I'm pretty sure that software could possibly get rid of it, but it's not really worth the work as it's expected by users and, as you mentioned, not life threatening.

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Nope, happens whether or not video is being shown, it happens with CD or MP3 audio too - this is some kind of deep hook into Windows that I'm sure is caused by the DDC/EDID. – Lunatik Oct 8 '09 at 18:51
"When the TV is powered on or off" you said. That would be using the video card wouldn't it? – thepaulpage Oct 8 '09 at 20:49
Sorry, took video to mean video file playback, not output from graphics card. This doesn't happen with monitors though, only with the TV, and I've never seen this behaviour in nearly 20 years working with PCs. – Lunatik Oct 9 '09 at 5:15
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up vote 0 down vote accepted

As a sort-of answer to this question, I've now replaced the HTPC with a new one and the problem has disappeared. I can only assume that some mainboard/chipset limitation was causing this as I had tried both Nvidia and AMD/ATI video cards and various drivers with the old MSI-based Core 2 Duo system without success.

Based on the fact that hundreds of people have viewed this thread I can only assume my experiences were not unique, but for anyone else in the same siutation it's a bit disappointing to have reached the above conclusion.

For record, I'm now using a low-power AMD Zacate-based system using an Asus E35M1-M Pro and SSD and it compares very well with the older E6400 C2D system despite using about a fifth of the power and and space.

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