Quick tech question here. A few months ago I started getting complaints from the wife and the in-laws regarding DVD playback on the home system. I was never there to witness it, but the reports went along the lines of:
the DVD doesn't play;
the DVD plays but there is no sound through the TV;
it plays sometimes but not others;

Most men here would file those under User Error. Especially when you have supply complete written instructions, with drawings, for you in-laws when they house-sit for the weekend.

As it turns out, I had the same issue when the wife and I sat down for a flick a few weeks ago. The player menu comes up on the TV, so it's safe to assume that no cables have been moved. The disc menu does not come up, though when play is pressed the counter starts to tick and there is audio. There's just no display from the DVD. That lead me to think that the player was dead. I tried composite jacks and they worked just fine. None of the settings on the TV have been changed. Everything is still set to HDMI, 16x9, etc.

I got Toshiba on the phone and they were nice, but useless.

So, I picked up a Phillips DVD player this week and got it hooked up. Very similar issues. Player menu comes up, disc menu comes (which is better than before) but there's static when you play the disc. Strangely enough, there is also a green flick that appears on the screen every few seconds.

I pack everything back. The new DVD player was going back anyway due to the fact that it didn't have an optical audio out. Back up a sec...

A week or so ago, I noticed that the picture on the TV, while viewing the cable input, went dead. I thought it was the Dish box again. I reset everything and finally narrowed the issue down the composite jacks on the TV. I switched to a aux set and everything worked just fine. Though there is a bit of play in the jacks that effects the display. The cables come into the set and make a sharp right angle before the go into the jacks. My thinking was that due to the location of the first composite inputs there was too much turn in the cables. The second set of jacks was in less constraining position. So, I kept everything like so, and it was fine.

Back to the DVD issue. Being up late last night, as usual, I decided to play around with the old DVD player and see if things were any different. When the new player was set up, I noticed an error message that appeared on the scrren just prior to the disc playing, and the static screen. It said that HDCP non-compliant. That made me think that there was an issue with the connections. The TV is only two years old and very compliant.

So I flip everything on and rotate the TV so that I can see it while I'm at the DVD player. Sure enough, I get a flick in the display. I hop behind the set and fiddle with the HDMI connector and I get a solid picture. The disc plays, but there is no audio through the TV. The sound should go through the HDMI cable to the TV. Normally, I use an amp for the sound. So, I do not pay a lot of attention to the TV audio. Normally, there was usually an error message that said HDMI Audio Not Supported, when the disc cycled through chapters. I swear it wasn't every time, but most of the time I got the error. I paid little attention to it because of the external amp.

Now I've got a solid display on the TV while playing disc. Then the audio just comes on. It's late, so the TV volume is at a trickle. I'm flipping through chapters and the sound comes on. So, now everything is back to normal. I've got video and audio while playing a DVD.

The questions is whether the issue is the HDMI cable itself, or the HDMI jack on the TV? The cable's are around $50 and not a huge deal. If it's the set, then it's got to go in for service, or I settle for composite video on a 720p 32" LCD.