Question Getting white speckles with HDMI 4k

mr.black79

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With a Monoprice premium certified 4k between LG C9 and Panasonic 820 I had white speckles on playing John Wick 3. After swapping it for a Kenable premium certified HDMI the problem seemed to disappear. However while trying to watch Mission Impossible Fallout the speckles returned. On pressing stop and returning to the Panasonic splash screen there was quite a lot of them. The main home screen is normal and I haven't noticed speckles on any other Movies.

I'm hoping the player itself is not faulty, can anyone recommend HDMI cables? I'd like to have some confidence they'll do the job and not waste more time and money. My Cableson v1.4 HDMI were great for many years, but upgrading is proving to be a pain.
 
How long is your cable run? If it is under 25', then a Premium High Speed HDMI cable (with the QR label for authenticity) is about as good as you can get because they are certified by HDMI.org to meet all of the HDMI 2.0 option sets. Make sure you don't have any sharp bends (no sharp 90 degree angles) and that the cable fits snugly in the HDMI ports without any stress on the cable connection. Do you have any other devices you could connect to the C9 using the same cable as a test to rule out the 820? No cable mfr can give you a 100% guarantee that their cable will work in all setups regardless of the product description or marketing so it can be a bit of trial and error.
 
How long is your cable run? If it is under 25', then a Premium High Speed HDMI cable (with the QR label for authenticity) is about as good as you can get because they are certified by HDMI.org to meet all of the HDMI 2.0 option sets. Make sure you don't have any sharp bends (no sharp 90 degree angles) and that the cable fits snugly in the HDMI ports without any stress on the cable connection. Do you have any other devices you could connect to the C9 using the same cable as a test to rule out the 820? No cable mfr can give you a 100% guarantee that their cable will work in all setups regardless of the product description or marketing so it can be a bit of trial and error.
The cable is 1m long as the devices are on the middle shelf of my TV stand. I'm careful with not handling the cable too much and making sure the HDMI is firmly fitted. I shall try swapping the cable with my Nvidia Shield TV instead for testing
 
At 1m you shouldn't have any issues at all. Some have suggested that 1m (3') is too short for high speed HDMI but I've used 1m Premium cables before with no issues. In fact I've tested 4' hybrid fiber cables, which are active, with no issues. Let us know how the testing goes.
 
Which Input on the TV are you using and are all of the Source devices going via the AVR?

Joe
 
Which Input on the TV are you using and are all of the Source devices going via the AVR?

Joe
All devices are connected to the TV with Panasonic UHD Blu-ray player connected to HDMI 3 and Sharc eARC connected to HDMI 2 as I have an older receiver.
 
I tested both cables with the Nvidia Shield TV. The Monoprice had white speckles, but the Kenable did not. Next I put the Kenable back in the Panasonic, except connected to TV HDMI 4 this time. Once again the speckles returned, so it can't be the TV HDMI inputs, the Monoprice must be faulty, can't be certain about the Kenable, but it does raise a question about the Panasonic HDMI output.

The Panasonic is on its default settings apart from selecting OLED in it's HDR options and enabling HDR optimiser. The issue only seems to affect DV discs so far
 
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I reset the Panasonic to it's defaults, disabled HDR 10+ since my LG is not compatible and enabled HDR optimiser for OLED.

In testing DV discs, John Wick 3 and Mission Impossible Fallout there were no white speckles. However when playing The Shining, there were white speckles in between loading screens. The rest of the movie was fine. This is happened once since in between loading screens with John Wick 3 too.
 
Disable the HDR optimiser and see if that makes a difference. I have a C8 and the UBK90 and have no issues whatsoever. Certainly the UBK90 is not in the same class as the UB820 but it does sound like a config issue somewhere. As I said, at 1m just about any High Speed HDMI cable would work, certainly a Premium High Speed HDMI cable, so I don't think it's the cable. It's possible, but doubtful.

Did you bypass the receiver and try a direct connect?
 
Disable the HDR optimiser and see if that makes a difference. I have a C8 and the UBK90 and have no issues whatsoever. Certainly the UBK90 is not in the same class as the UB820 but it does sound like a config issue somewhere. As I said, at 1m just about any High Speed HDMI cable would work, certainly a Premium High Speed HDMI cable, so I don't think it's the cable. It's possible, but doubtful.

Did you bypass the receiver and try a direct connect?
Yes I've had to connect directly to the TV because my receiver cannot pass 4k. All 3 devices are connected to the TV and then a Sharc eARC audio extractior is connected to my AVR for HD audio codecs. I'll try without the HDR optimiser enabled to see what happens, this feature is one of the reasons I bought the player. The only other frustration is a slight lip sync delay noticed with the Shining
 
I'd remove the Sharc eARC extractor as well as a test. 4k HDR doesn't do well with devices in-between the source and sink. eARC can be a major pain in the @ss, similar to the issues that still plague CEC today.
 
Is your player changing output format when in the loading screens?

Joe
No, not that I can tell, it's during the very brief moment between loading screens, where the whole screen is blank, that I've noticed the issue a couple of times the last few days. The movies have otherwise otherwise been clear in short tests. Spotting a lip sync delay with the Shining is an annoyance I'll tackle later, although I'm not sure the Blu-ray players AV sync delay applies to bitstream
 
Tricky one to fault find - Source > 2m Premium High Speed HDMI > Display (all Inputs) would be my test rig.

Joe
 
I tried the suggestions and seen the speckles twice although not as obviously. Decided to factory reset Panasonic player with holding coloured buttons and enter button method and tried yet more certified cables SlimHDMI
it's handy being able to get cables in different lengths to tidy up.

This time round I haven't seen any white speckles, although the very first loading screens, studio logo jingles, either have sound and no picture or neither until it 'catches up'. Once it arrives at the main menu, there are no issues so far in playing the discs, apart from from lip sync on some Dolby vision titles.
 
At 1m you shouldn't have any issues at all. Some have suggested that 1m (3') is too short for high speed HDMI but I've used 1m Premium cables before with no issues. In fact I've tested 4' hybrid fiber cables, which are active, with no issues. Let us know how the testing goes.

Where did you read that, never heard that before.
 
Where did you read that, never heard that before.
It was posted on AVS Forum a long time ago and I thought it was incorrect because I had never seen any data that substantiated that. I talked to Ruipro and they sent me cables at those lengths to test and I found no problems. In fact, I will be testing their new 4k and 8k cables soon at those lengths.
 
'Where did you read that, never heard that before' - 2m is the 'standard' length for HDMI cables and many devices can have issues, in certain combinations, with cables which are less than 2m.

Joe
 
....and the speckles return. It shouldn't be this difficult getting kit that works, I very rarely had issues with my previous 1080p setup. I've even had speckles and picture drop outs while loading a standard Blu-ray!

Once the movie starts it's fine apart from occasional audio drop outs on some 4k disks. If it was the player at fault then surely I would have had an obvious problem whichever cable was used. However the TPS SlimHDMI initially performed better than the cheaper Kenable before today with only loading screens experiencing picture dropouts.

Cable wise I'm at a loss, shouldn't have to spend too much and yet it seems like a lottery. Mark Grant cables would be well engineered, but their expensive.
 

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