Can not play DVD's past the intros.

[joeuu]

First timer here and will appreciate any guidence.

I have a Scientific Atlanta set-top box via Charter cable.

I have a Panasonic DMR-ES25 using HDMI to the TV.

I have an older Aquos LCD with the seperate I/O unit.

Everything is perfect except I can not play commercial DVD's unless I unplug the cable input to the DVR, they freeze after the commercials and previews prior to the main attraction. Once I unplug the cable, everything is fine.

If we record a program, in order to play it back and use the remote properly, we need to unplug the cable and again everything is fine.

It seems that there is a sort of HDMI/copyright handshaking thing going on. I called Panasonic and they new about it right away and suggested I watch their site for firmware updates but there have been none, and it has been months.

This is inconvenient, and occasionally we forget to plug the cable back in.

Is there anything I can do on this end to fix this annoyance?

Thanks for the look!

[Nelson37]

Strange. Sounds like a bug in the DVR, only thing I could think of would be to try Component out from the DVR to the TV, and use the HDMI for the cable box to the TV.

[Krispy Kritter]

I agree, different video connections or the firmware update.

[yoda313]

Get a different a/v switch for your tv. Get it so you can seperate it with your dvd player as a seperate input. Then you can simply switch back and forth with a button.

[joeuu]

Thank you everyone for the input!

@Nelson37-When I first called Panasonic, the first question from support was "is your STB Scientific Atlanta"?, he knew about this issue.
@Krispy Kritter-I did do a firmware update to bring the DVR current and there has been nothing since.
@yoda313 and Nelson37-My three year old Aquos has a separate AVC unit. It has one HDMI out to the LCD and only one HDMI in. It does have other inputs but I'm not willing to give up the increased quality of HDMI. The switch we use is to manually unplug the coax from the AVC unit, then everything is great. (;>)

[Krispy Kritter]

If it is in fact a known bug, then the only fix will be via firmware.

A workaround, would be to use a different input (the bug is likely with HDMI). You shouldn't notice any visual quality difference between HDMI and component (especially not at the resolution you are likely running on your LCD).