[solved] No sound via stereo jack with Philips LCD-TV

Posted on by acme

I’ve recently bought a quite cheap LCD-TV from Philips. It’s an 42pfl5603d. The TV has FullHD (1920×1080) resolution and is 42″ in size. These are actually the only features I’ve been keen on.
The first one I sent back, because the TV set didn’t react either on remote or local (side panel) key presses. Amazon sent a new one after one week and I’ve started again to build my new HTPC. This time I was almost finished, MMS (My Media System) was already running, and sound was the only big thing I’ve been missing.

What I needed were two stereo (phone) jacks, one side should go into the PC, the other one into the backpanel of the TV-set. The video signal should be transfered via a DVI-HDMI adapter cable.
I’ve connected all, had video but no sound at all. After made almost all different kind of tests, I was pretty sure my PC provided sound via the stereo jacks. I’ve also assign the AUDIO IN (L/R) to the “HDMI 1” in TV-set menu, like it was told in the manual. But still no dice. Then – already desperate, I’ve started to ask Google, if it had a solution for me. And Google told me a very freaky thing to do.
I should get the EDID dump form my new LCD-TV and modify it. This workaround should solve this problem with NVIDIA cards, don’t know it other manufacturers are affected also. I didn’t believe that this should fix my problem, but – it did. It turned out, NVIDIA doesn’t handle some (all?) extended EDID informations correctly. So the communication between the DFP (digital flat panel) and my PC went wrong.

Here’s a description about how I did it:

  1. start nvidia-settings, go to your monitor (DFP-0) and hit the “Aquire EDID…” button, and save this file. Call it EDID.bin.long, if you rely on the description below
  2. now you need to cut off all bytes after position 128. 
     sudo dd if=./EDID.bin.long of=/etc/X11/EDID.bin bs=1 count=128

  3. now install hexedit 
    sudo aptitude install hexedit

  4. open your file: 
    sudo hexedit /etc/X11/EDID.bin

    and set the penultimate byte (hex: 7E) from "01" to "00", and then increase the last byte (position hex: 7F) by one (it’s hexadecimal! A get B, B get C and so on. F gets 0) . If your last checksum value is FF then try 00. Press Ctrl+X to save and exit hexedit.

  5. now edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Add the colored line to the Device section: 
    Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 8400 GS"
    Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/etc/X11/EDID.bin"
EndSection
  6. Restart X: Ctrl+Alt+Backspace
      Now sound should be available.

Would be cool to know if this solution works for other manufacturers (e.g. Sony, Sharp, Samsung ), too. Feedback welcome. :-)”

PS: All was done an Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex), x86.

10 thoughts on “[solved] No sound via stereo jack with Philips LCD-TV”

  1. Hi,

    I have same problem with Vista installed desktop machine. I have bought 42PFL8404 and I connected graphics card to tv’s HDMI input using a DVI-HDMI cable. Then i tried to connect using stereo jack from PC to TV as you write, there is graphics but no sound.

    My graphics card: Sparkle GeForce 8600GT (PCI-E) 512 MB GDDR3+Dual DVI-I+HDTV OUT

    My TV’s connections:
    http://www.p4c.philips.com/files/4/42pfl8404h_12/42pfl8404h_12_cow_.jpg

    •Ext 1 Scart: Audio L/R, CVBS in, RGB
    •Ext 2 Scart: Audio L/R, CVBS in, RGB
    •Ext 3: YPbPr, Audio L/R in
    •Front / Side connections: HDMI v1.3, S-video in, CVBS in, Audio L/R in, Headphone out, USB
    •PC network link: DLNA certified
    •Other connections: Analog audio Left/Right out, PC Audio in, PC-In VGA, S/PDIF out (coaxial),
    Common Interface
    •HDMI 1: HDMI v1.3
    •HDMI 2: HDMI v1.3
    •HDMI 3: HDMI v1.3
    •EasyLink (HDMI-CEC): One touch play, Remote control pass-through, System audio control, System standby

    How can I write those codes in Vista?
    Could you help me to solve this problem?
    Thanks…

  2. @Umut
    Unfortunately I can’t help. I don’t know/have Vista neither I do have any other Windows system running here with an LCD-TV.
    The only things I stumbled upon investigating this problem here, were also stories about troubles with Windows too. There seems afaik differences between Vista and XP regarding HDCP (Content scrambling), and something about licensing. In other words, it may depend on the software you are using to drive your TV set.

    Please see the above statements as pure speculations.

    I only hope a Windows reader, familiar with this issue, is able to help out.

    Sorry.

    Regards
    Andreas

  5. Tried the fix in Karmic, no Luck 🙁 Same TV, NVIDIA GTX 275 graphics card. Works fine in XP (sound via the audio in port on the TV, haven’t tried getting it to work via HDMI) but when I boot to ubuntu I get nada. If I plug in headphones to the computer I can hear the sound so there’s nothing wrong there. I’m thoroughly confused.

  7. @Chris
    Glad, you found the solution, because I had no idea at all.
    Thank you very much for the link, too.

    Regards,
    Andreas

  8. Thank you so much! After searching for a fix for about a week, this was the ONLY thing that actually worked. I’m running Karmic and outputting to a Samsung HDTV, so this fix definitely works with other manufacturers.

  9. Moin Andreas,
    thanks for the HowTo. It works with my Sony Bravia 40W4000 and GeForce 8400GS on Debian Squeeze/Sid. However I did not strip the edid.bin. I only had to edid the edid.bin (lol) as you mentioned. When I first tried to strip it down to 128 bytes, X did not start up.

    Ingmar

  10. Thank you for this solution. I, like many others on here, have been driving myself crazy for several days trying to figure this out. Worked great, and now I can actually use my TV for what I bought it for.

    Great work!

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