Jensen TV/radio audio cutting out from HDMI input

[nrvale0]

I have a '19 LEII. I'm getting annoyingly frequent audio drops through the Jensen TV and radio setup whenever I'm using the HDMI input on the TV. I've looked at other forums -- even some that are not RV-related -- and have tried replacing cables, cleaning and checking contacts, making sure the sending HDMI device has clean power, etc but the problem persists. Starting to expect the problem might be the HDMI input on the TV. I should also mention that I have no problems with audio when using a DVD so that seems to imply that the radio/DVD player and speakers themselves are ok.

Anyone else had this problem and have any advice?

[rideandfly]

nrvale0,

Few years ago our Jensen TV did the same thing. Believe it was the HDMI outlet on our TV in our 2015 LE2.

Ran RCA cables from TV to Furrion stereo/DVD player to fix the problem. Now have to choose AV (if I remember correctly) with TV remote instead of HDMI:

TV:

Furrion unit:

 

Edited January 5, 2021 by rideandfly

[Jim_Oker]

tNo experience  with that  TV, but here  are a few basic AV troubleshooting steps that may help if you haven't already tried these things (long ago I built and installed somewhat complicated interactive A/V systems in museums and at trade shows and got used this troubleshooting dance with A/V components, trying to isolate where problems lay).

 

If there's more than one HDMI input on the TV, you could try moving the input cord from one to the other to try to sort out whether the problem is in the TV or in the cord or the device that's providing the source signal. You would of course have to select that second HDMI input on the TV menu. If you have a computer monitor in your house that takes an HDMI input (and has  a speaker, which is not uncommon in later model LCD monitors) you could also bring that into the trailer and swap the HDMI input cable from your trailer's TV to the computer monitor to see whether that  HDMI cable/plug is providing a good signal to the TV...

Edited January 5, 2021 by Jim_Oker

[nrvale0]

Only one HDMI on my model but I do have a computer monitor I could bring in. Heck, if I could figure out a way to power it I'd consider swapping it out with the Jensen permanently. ;)

It's pretty funny that @rideandflysuggested the RCA cables as several times while debugging I've sworn under my breath along the lines of "...never had problems like this with the analog sh*t..." ;)

Will post here when I make some progress...

[rideandfly]

3 hours ago, nrvale0 said:

Only one HDMI on my model but I do have a computer monitor I could bring in. Heck, if I could figure out a way to power it I'd consider swapping it out with the Jensen permanently. 😉

It's pretty funny that @rideandflysuggested the RCA cables as several times while debugging I've sworn under my breath along the lines of "...never had problems like this with the analog sh*t..." 😉

Will post here when I make some progress...

I did not want to use RCA cables either. Only have one HDMI output on our TV, too.

Good luck! 🙂

[mossemi]

10 hours ago, nrvale0 said:

I have a '19 LEII. I'm getting annoyingly frequent audio drops through the Jensen TV and radio setup whenever I'm using the HDMI input on the TV. I've looked at other forums -- even some that are not RV-related -- and have tried replacing cables, cleaning and checking contacts, making sure the sending HDMI device has clean power, etc but the problem persists. Starting to expect the problem might be the HDMI input on the TV. I should also mention that I have no problems with audio when using a DVD so that seems to imply that the radio/DVD player and speakers themselves are ok.

Anyone else had this problem and have any advice?

Can you clarify a couple of questions to help eliminate some of the points of failure?  Which speakers are you using when the audio drops?  There are front and rear speakers in my 2017 LE2 wired to the Jensen stereo and I can select either pair or both.  My tv and stereo both have DVD players which will display video on the tv.  Which one are you having success with?  Do the tv speakers work ok?  Do the speakers sound good or bad with the radio?  Was the HDMI cable one of the cables that you replaced?

Mossey

[Jim_Oker]

One other swap worth making is the HDMI cable presumably no need to do any  pulling/snaking just to do the test though you do need a spare and ideally known-good HDMI cable... 

[nrvale0]

Just looping back on this with the latest results...

So I have a little Vero 4K+ media player I hooked up today with a couple of different HDMI cables for testing the connection with between the media player and the TV. Regardless of cable and regardless of audio settings on the TV (mainly Automatic Volume Control on or off) I'm still getting audio cuts on the HDMI connection. I turned on the speakers on the TV so I could get audio through both the TV speakers and the house speakers to verify that the problems were not with any of the videos themselves and while the TV speakers are 100% reliable the house speakers would cut out. Oddly enough, in the same parts of the video(s) every test run. 

I removed the Jensen head unit from the wall and verified that the cabling from the TV into Aux 2 on the head unit is in fact the red and white RCA-style cables. I believe those are analog cables and thus my current guess is that there's something wrong with the TV not when it comes to decoding the audio from the HDMI input but in converting it to an analog signal and sending it to the head unit.

The audio never cuts out when playing a DVD which makes me think that Jensen head unit is probably ok. 

I'm well beyond warranty period for the Jensen kit though the system has demonstrated this behavior since the day I rolled out of the factory. My bad, I guess.

I have an LCD computer monitor in storage that will mount up to the folding arm the TV currently inhabits so I may just swap the LCD monitor up and see how that works out.

 

[Jim_Oker]

Interesting. So you're  getting some of the audio from  the video, but  it cuts in and out?  I wonder if maybe the video has  dolby surround info (or whatever  the enhanced audio for video is these days) and the  head  unit isn't correctly interpreting it into stereo (i.e. is just cutting out the  center  channel info  or some such). Just a harebrained  theory w/o knowing much about the formats  of audio currently  being used  with  video... Whereas the  TV is  peachy  with  the  audio format.

If I'm on  the  right  track, I also wonder  if there's  any relevant setting on the  head unit that would fix that  for  you.

[nrvale0]

I don't know much about the audio and video formats themselves but I've tried a number of videos with similar results. Here's the audio section output of the 'mediainfo' command run against one of the files:

 

Quote

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : A_AAC-2
Duration                                 : 3 h 14 min
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate                               : 43.066 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Title                                    : ISO Media file produced by Google Inc.
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

 

 

 

Doesn't look like anything super fancy to me but, I dunno. The container formats for all of the files is VP9. 

[Jim_Oker]

Yeah, as I mentioned I don't know much about  audio formats.  I  may have  misread your  post but  it  seems like you're saying that  the audio  plays  OK  through the speaker on the  TV but not through the  separate speakers  driven by the stereo head unit. That the sound cuts out at  the  same moments in the  content sure  makes  it  sound like some sort of decoding or format converting problem (whether due to a configurable setting or horked hardware is another question though), especially if it's playing fine on the TV speaker... Good luck.

[nrvale0]

That's right. Thanks for the eyes on.

As of this morning I'm not getting any audio from HDMI through the house speakers so perhaps I have a loose connection. Would be great if it just worked out to be a loose connection but, like you say, I suspect its an issue with D/A conversion. Currently looking through my pile of AV equipment in storage to see if I can put something other than the TV inline between the Vero and the head unit to isolate the problem to the TV.

Will update as I figure out. A replacement Jensen TV is ~$200 retail. Sort of considering just replacing the TV to see if that resolves. 

[nrvale0]

Alright, closing the loop on this one. I'll spare the details as to how but with some spare HDMI and RCA audio cables I was able to isolate the source of the problem to somewhere between the HDMI input of the Jensen TV and the analog audio out of the TV. All other cables and components passed testing.

So a new Jensen TV is > $250 bucks. Or perhaps I can take it to an electronics repair place but I doubt it. In any case, I have other priorities right now so what I did was instead run a 12ft RCA cable from the back of the receiver to the attic and then mounted an HDMI audio extractor box (and and HDMI splitter for other devices living in the attic) and that's working like a charm.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XJITK7E/

I suppose I need to come up with some nice racking with cable management for the attic since I have a PS4, Vero, Raspberry Pi, surge protector, HDMI splitter, and audio extractor up there now. Time to break out the 3D printer. ;)

Edited February 12, 2021 by nrvale0

[Galway Girl]

Very creative solution....Thanks for posting.

Hull 505 - 2019 EII - Galway Girl

C.S.

 

[nrvale0]

If I'm able to make some nice racking I'll post that up on its own thread. :D

[BlueHighways]

Similar enough issue that I thought I'd add to this thread. 

We got stuck inside this week with big storms and streamed a series over our phone from Netflix. With about 2 minutes left in each episode, the sound completely stops. If you let it run, it starts back at the next episode. Remembering this thread, I played the sound thru the head unit and noticed it cut out when there was no speaking.  

All of this to say you're on the right track with the conversion of the signal from digital to analog being the problem. Any deeper than that and I have no clue 

[nrvale0]

Audio drops are back even though the audio completely bypasses the TV and is routed to the receiver over analog RCA cables. There are no audio drops when playing a DVD so that suggests the issue is not a loose connection between the receiver and the speakers. By process of elimination it seems that the receiver may be faulty. Going rate for JWM40 is north of $175.

It would be an expensive experiment to get a replacement unit hoping that is the fix. I'm going to let that decision bake for a while and I'll report back later. Another option might be to replace the receiver with something other than Jensen as this has left a rather bad taste in my mouth re the brand. This and having to use the factory reset button on the unit once a month or so when it stops playing nicely with Bluetooth devices.

There is a headphone jack on the front of the receiver so I suppose I could feed audio into the receive from a trusted device like an mp3 player and see if I can repro the audio drops via that input and thus further point the blame at the receiver.

Annoying...

Edited March 3, 2021 by nrvale0

[Frank C]

I’ve had the audio drop issue as well now and then with the Jensen system.  Always seemed to happen when a TV program would return after a commercial, but not with a DVD.   And it seemed to happen most often at campgrounds that had DirectTV as the television feed through the campground cable hookup.   And once the audio cut out completely and would not work at all.  You mentioned you did the reset, just curious which one.  There are two reset functions mentioned in the manual, one by pushing the Enter knob function for Bluetooth resets, and the other reset is the little hidden button.   I did have some success fixing the audio issues by doing the little button reset function on the Jensen receiver. There’s a tiny hidden recessed button on the front panel for a reset.  Number 21 on the illustration.  Check your Jensen manual.   Ours is a 2019, Hull #461, but your receiver may be different.  And I too am looking at upgrading the receiver at some point.  

Edited March 3, 2021 by FrankC

[nrvale0]

I've been using the pinhole reset about once a month. But always because BT has stopped working. I should try it the next time I get these audio drops and see if it changes anything. Thanks for the idea.

[Janis]

We purchased Hull 617 April 2020 and had the same Jensen TV audio cutting-out problem as being described in this post .

 

Our action steps to-date:

 

1. We contacted Oliver May 2020 and they recommended contacting Jensen to resolve the problem. We were unsuccessful, Jensen confirmed that they had no other reports of this type of problem.

2. Contacted Oliver and they sent a new Jensen TV (same model). However, this did not resolve the problem.

3. We bought a SuperSonic TV 110v. It did not provide an analog output for the sound but did have an optical audio output.  Additionally, we bought a digital-to-analog converter to provide the analog audio to the Jensen stereo. This setup resolved the no sound (cutting out) problem, however, it caused a humming through the speakers that was even more annoying. We purchased a higher quality DAC unit but it still hummed so we returned the TV and both DAC’s.

4. March 2021 Oliver performed annual maintenance and during this visit Jason replaced the audio cables between the TV and stereo.  However, this did not resolve the problem.

5. August 2021 we continue to have the problem.  We again confirmed that the sound works correctly through the TV speakers. We agree with a previous poster that the audio decoding within the TV seems to be the problem.

6. August 4, 2021, contacted ASA Electronics (parent of Jensen) at 877-845-8750. The Rep, Erin, confirmed our call in May 2020 and is willing to provide a new TV under a good-will warranty if we work through a dealership to receive it. They want the old TV returned at owner’s expense. The Rep confirmed that she has not seen any complaints on this matter.  This same response was communicated to us in May 2020. She confirmed they do conduct a 4 hour burn-in test for all TV functions.

7. So at this point we can deal with it “as is”,  OR work through a dealership on the West Coast to receive the new TV (dealer $, ship to Jensen $) with no guarantees it will resolve the issue, OR use Oliver as the middleman dealer to receive and then forward the new TV to us and handle the forwarding of the old TV to Jensen (assuming Oliver agrees to this) again no guarantees it will resolve the issue, OR spend $ to buy and reconfigure a 110v TV and stereo such as the Vizio/Furrion solution that Oliver changed to in 2021 in part because of this issue and the lack of solution from Jensen. What would you do?

[GarryandKristi]

On 2/11/2021 at 10:37 PM, nrvale0 said:

Alright, closing the loop on this one. I'll spare the details as to how but with some spare HDMI and RCA audio cables I was able to isolate the source of the problem to somewhere between the HDMI input of the Jensen TV and the analog audio out of the TV. All other cables and components passed testing.

So a new Jensen TV is > $250 bucks. Or perhaps I can take it to an electronics repair place but I doubt it. In any case, I have other priorities right now so what I did was instead run a 12ft RCA cable from the back of the receiver to the attic and then mounted an HDMI audio extractor box (and and HDMI splitter for other devices living in the attic) and that's working like a charm.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XJITK7E/

I suppose I need to come up with some nice racking with cable management for the attic since I have a PS4, Vero, Raspberry Pi, surge protector, HDMI splitter, and audio extractor up there now. Time to break out the 3D printer. 😉

I put an hdmi switch (auto) in our attic too. We have the furrion tv and dvd/radio that has hdmi out to the tv. With splitter can use Roku stick (seldom due to lack of speedy cell phone service even with booster) or lightning to hdmi with phone and play downloaded Netflix stuff.  The furrion tv was rigged with rca outs to DVD/radio av in.  But,  have to say just watching air TV with Andy Griffith and grit Tv westerns is kind of fun for a simple change of pace.