I finally got my ATI CableCARD tuner from Dell last Thursday and after having a little trouble getting it working I started to notice something very odd and down right unacceptable.

I leave VMC running all the time on my dedicated HTPC so that my extender can access it. Ever since I installed my CableCARD tuner when I turn on the TV there is a just a black screen (TV indicates it's receiving a 1080p signal). If I hit buttons I hear the sounds and the extenders continue to work fine, but if I get out the mouse and keyboard I can't see the cursor and it doesn't seem to respond to any keyboard presses (not even ctrl+at+delete or ctrl+shift+esc). If I telnet in and kill ehshell.exe it returns me to my desktop, then I re-launch VMC that then works properly, except all the CableCARD channels (ATSC channels are fine) have unwatchable pixelation (yes I checked every channel I watch, about 20). If I reboot, then all the channels work fine.

Going into the System log I see this event every 2 seconds from the time I turned off the display until the time I killed ehshell.exe.

Log Name:      System
Source:        atikmdag
Date:          4/20/2008 9:06:46 AM
Event ID:      52233
Task Category: CPLIB
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      VMC1
Description:
CPLIB :: General - Failed to authenticate output protection


My setup is pretty much a out of the box Dell XPS 420.
Intel Q6600 quad core.
3GB Ram
500GB SATA HDD
ATI Radeon HD3650 via HDMI @ 1080p60 (tried both Catalyst 8.3 and 8.4)
Pioneer PDP-6010FD
1 ATI CableCARD tuner
1 VBox PCI ATSC tuner
1 HDHomeRun dual ATSC tuner.

Probably have m-cards ??

This is a known issue even with s-cards sometimes usually changing the channel up or down will resolve the issue

I definilty have an S-Card.
Can't change channels as the remote doesn't seem to work at this time. Can't hit info or anything, not even ctrl+al+delete works or ctrl+shift+esc. The only way I know the video card is even working is that the TV reports it's receiving 1080p and if I unplug the HDMI, the TV responds accordingly. And when I kill ehshell.exe the screen doesn't have to resync, the desktop just appears. I can also shut down by pressing the power button (not holding it down) and as soon as I do I can see the Windows is shutting down screen.

Also, I never leave my VMC with video running on it, as I want to ensure it doesn't occupy a tuner in case my wife wants to watch TV on the extender. I have my harmony programmed to send a "stop" command when it leaves the activity.


Another thing I noticed is that it doesn't happen right away, I just turned it off for 5 minutes and it didn't happen. I'm leaving in a bit to take my daughter to the zoo and when I do, I plan to note the exact time so I can go back and examine the logs to see how long it takes before it happeneds.

Still not any closer to a solution, but as  possible work around I programmed my macro to turn close VMC while the TV is off and then launch it when the TV is turned on. Hopefully this will resolve the problem. I thought of this after I realized that Media Center didn't have to be running in order for an Extender to connect -- duh.

Closing VMC didn't help, screen was still black this morning, same errors filling up the logs and had to telnet in to kill ehshell.exe.

I have had this problem in the past but when I turn off my tv if I put my Media Center PC into away mode I don't have the problem.

Thanks nathang, my issue was resolved in a simlar way.
The issue was resolved for me by setting Windows Power Setting to turn off the display after 5 minutes, even though Windows isn't capable of turning off the display, this appears to tell the ATI driver to stop trying to verify the HDCP handshake.

Thanks bjdraw... that fix worked for me as well.  Hopefully ATI will figure out a permanent solution for this in an upcoming driver release.

I suppose they could figure out a way to disable the HDCP handshake, but it'd pertain to all HD displays.

What would be really cool is if they would do HDMI-CEC and automatically turn the display on and off for us.