RPi3 black screens when KODI launches

ttower · November 9, 2017 at 8:11 PM

I seem to have tried this every which way, but when Kodi launches the screen goes black and... nothing. The keyboard however seems to be listening because if I press the Enter or Esc key I get a swoosh noise...

I put NOOBs v2.4 on my 8GB SanDisk (SDSDQUAN-008G-G4A) micro SDHC card. The RPi boots up the NOOBS installer fine. If I choose LibreELEC_RPi2 (8.2.0.1 I believe), it installs, reboots and then... the above blank screen.

If instead I choose Raspbian to install then it installs fine and boots into Raspbian just fine. Then if under Raspbian I install KODI and follow all the instructions and then launch KODI, back to the blank screen again as above.

What kind of voodoo do I need to do here? Could it really be the SanDisk not playing well with my RPi3? It is supposed to be an OK card to use...

Someone tell me this is a simple fix!

Many regards, ttower

**chewitt** · November 11, 2017 at 4:02 AM Official Post

If you hear the clicks and whoshes from keyboard navigation Kodi is running but the default output (60Hz, 1080p) doesn't agree with the TV for some reason. You might need to experiment with changes in config.txt, see Raspberry Pi Documentation .. it has nothing to do with the SD card.

ttower · November 13, 2017 at 10:12 PM

Problem solved. My RPi3 is HDMI attached to a Vizio VX240M tv/monitor. I found the config.txt file and replaced

hdmi_force_hotplug=1

...with

hdmi_safe=1

That allowed the Vizio to start displaying, albeit at a crummy rez. I then used the Kodi interface to get it to display nicely at 1920x1080.

Thank you!

efa2 · January 5, 2018 at 5:29 PM

I had an old Rpi1B, just updated to LibreELEC to 8.2.1 with Kodi 17.6, and I experience this trouble (old 16.1 worked well).

Swithing ON the Pi, the Philips TV automatically select HDMI1 and show the NOOB and LibreELEC splash screen, but them only black screen.

Selecting again with TV remote controller the INPUT selector to HDMI1 (require to cycle all the inputs) the Kodi interface is shown.

Now I will try your work around, certainly better, thank you.

efa2 · August 17, 2018 at 2:08 PM

changing parameters in config.txt doesn't worked for me.

I changed the vertical refresh rate in Kodi from 60 Hz to 59.94 Hz, wait time on refresh update to 2 s, plus resolution from DESKTOP to 1680x1050 and now work with my Philips TV.

Anyway it is bad that old LibreElec 16.1 worked well without this hack, while the new version black the screen after the LibreElec splash