[RPi5 2GB] Scrambled Display on Sony Bravia X90L

    Hey, folks.

    Please be patient with me as I barely pay attention to any of tech around TVs, variants of HDMI, variants of 4K/8K, etc. We are simple folks who just want to watch a digitized collection of our old movies. ;)

    I have a Bravia X90L series (55") and I just picked up a Pi5 CanaKit with all of the bells-and-whistles to double-sided tape a LibreELEC media center to the back of the TV over the fireplace. The version of LibreELEC is recent -- whatever came out of the business end of rpi-imager this afternoon.

    I basically don't get a signal from the Pi5 at any of the HDMI ports with the exception of the highest-end HDMI-4 (4K and a bunch of whiz-bang I don't understand) port. At Pi boot I get the LibreELEC boot splash and then the attached not-quite-right display state. I can use the remote to navigate something as I can hear the UI element audio indications but I cannot see what I'm doing in the UI.

    I've seen some posts about adjusting some display settings (ex: Deep Color) but I'm not finding them buried anywhere in the various menus of the Bravia.

    Perhaps someone could take a look at the picture and point me in a possible direction?

    thx

  • Go to Best Answer

    Rule out electromagnetic interference. Take the RPi away from the TV for a test, and use a proper HDMI 2.0 /2.1 cable.

    If it doesn't work, install Raspberry Pi OS on another microSD, and give it a shot. That's the gold standard OS for all RPi.

    The Pi is sitting on a wooden shelf with the only nearby devices being a sound bar and the TV itself. I don't have a great way to test the interference hypothesis but I think it is ruled out by some other tests.

    I wrote RPIOS to the same SD card and booted that attached to the screen. It was able to negotiate a signal with the TV without a problem though I did forget to check if it was 4k. I guess perhaps I will go back and check that later.

    As a final set of steps I wrote LibreELEC to the SD card with two different card readers and in both cases the boot results in the corrupted screen scenario I first posted.

    So not entirely sure how to proceed. I will go check for 4k with RPIOS and I will see if I can any information about how "Deep Color" might translate to the Bravia settings.

    Quote from HarryH

    Do you use a RPi5 2GiB model? I can remember that you should use a current LE nightly to support that. I think the scrambled picture looks so...


    Mine is actually an 8GB. But perhaps the issue is not a function of amount of memory but something else?

    Yes, you should give it at try. The chip hardware was reworked to reduce the production costs for the RPi5 2GiB model. Maybe that change is responsible for the special handling and for new production lots of other models it's needed too now. Only a assumption...

    EDIT:
    The related change should this one https://github.com/LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv/pull/9253

    It depends more on the chip revision 2712C1 vs. 2712D0 than the memory size. But the RPi5 2GiB seems to be one of the first models with that revision and you could be affected by this.

    Edited 2 times, last by HarryH (October 12, 2024 at 12:58 PM).

    Well, shoot. I just tried the nightly and got the same results as to the corrupted display. I have a PiKVM bouncing around here. Does LibreELEC boot include a serial console? If so, I suppose I could tap into my Pi and get some debugging information.

    RPi4/5 boards don't support 4K60 at HDMI 4:2:0 which causes some issues with TV's that default to that mode. This is when config might be needed on the TV side to enable special modes (LG calls it Deep Colour, no idea what Sony might call it). However that issue will normally result in 4K50/59.94/60 modes not being detected and thus not being usable. It doesn't normally prevent you seeing the Kodi desktop. In your case it looks like something is being rendered (but messed up).

    If you add "video=HDMI-A-1:1920x1080M@60" to boot params in "cmdline.txt" (all on one line) it will force the initial HDMI output on the HDMI connector nearest the power connector to 1080p, which will eliminate a 4K issue from suspicion. If you also add "ssh" to boot params it will force the SSH daemon to start so you can SSH into the device to run "pastekodi" and share logs (share the URL generated here).

    You should be able to find the equivalent to ‘Deep Colour’ on your SONY here:

    Menu -> Settings (gear wheel) -> Channel & Inputs -> External Inputs -> HDMI signal format -> HDMI 1/2/3/4:

    • Standard format
    • Enhanced format <- could be equal to Deep Colour
    • Enhanced format (Dolby Vision)
    • Enhanced format (VRR)

    The last 2 options are only available at HDMI 3 / 4. So maybe you should also try another HDMI port: 1 vs. 3 or 4 for a crosscheck.

    PS: Do you know if you have the latest firmware version installed on your TV? For the European model of this TV, this is: 6.7612 from 18 September 2024.

    Edited 2 times, last by HarryH (October 12, 2024 at 3:39 PM).

    On a related note, I'm not married to the Pi5. There are plenty of things I could do with it other than use it as a media node. Is there another set of kit that works well with LibreELEC and has a similar form factor? I have tons of solar on the house so I'm not super concerned about if another set of kit uses a bit more power. I don't really want to go down the route of a SFF because I'm limited for space in this particular location.

    Just for reference, as it is not an RPi5:
    In the meantime, I have tested my RPi4 with LE 12 nightly-20240914-7b7b3db directly on the X90L at "HDMI 3 (eARC/ARC)" without the issue like you have.
    Works immediately without any special settings. HDMI signal format: Standard format

    There's a timer on my ability to post so rather than respond to folks with quotes I'll have to roll everything up in a single post...

    HarryH Wow, that was buried in the menus! You must have either a photog memory or a Bravia. :D As it turns, that setting was already enabled.

    chewitt This corruption is happening at first boot. I'll look to see if there is a single user mode or some way to pause the boot loader to see if I can add those troubleshooting options. Thx. Stand by.

    Hmm...

    I added the video= line but I'm still getting the same corrupted video.

    I also added "ssh" to the end(?) of config.txt but no sshd running:


    Host is up (0.00026s latency).
    Not shown: 997 closed tcp ports (reset)
    PORT    STATE SERVICE
    111/tcp open  rpcbind
    139/tcp open  netbios-ssn
    445/tcp open  microsoft-ds


    I couldn't find anything on the wiki, SEs, or via LLM that suggested I needed anything fancier than just appending as the last line of the file.

    I plugged the Pi into an low-end Dell 27" monitor just for kicks. Same result. Also swapped cables and tried both the stable and nightly builds. Also same results.

    Seems like there is some sort of problem with Pi5. Or at least *my* Pi5.

    Edited 2 times, last by wizardly_jennings: Merged a post created by wizardly_jennings into this post. (October 12, 2024 at 8:42 PM).

    Y, too many windows open. I mounted the .img file to do some inspection and accidentally modded it rather than the SD card I had just written and mounted. I have SSH now though.

    https://paste.libreelec.tv/evident-shark.log

    After setting the video=... and rebooting I tried both HDMI-4 and HDMI-1 on the Bravia and toggled the Enhanced Format to see if that would resolve. Nothing so far. Same result.

    I'm going to try the Dell monitor next but there's no wired network over there so...