AV receivers for PS5 and Xbox Series X reportedly hit by major HDMI bug

As our video game industry continues to be blessed with upgrades like 4K resolution at 120Hz, variable refresh rates, and automatic low latency mode switching, there have been a fair number of glitches as well. Case in point: LG OLED TVs facing issues while handling the output of Nvidia’s RTX 30 graphics cards. In a similar vein, AV receivers made by Marantz, Denon, and Yamaha are facing HDMI bugs that make it impossible to render 4K videos at 120Hz on the PS5 and Xbox Series X.

According to German website Heisse Online, while the aforementioned AV receiver manufacturers have announced brand new receiver rangers that carry HDMI 2.1 ports capable of supporting all the cool features promised by Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles, their HDMI implementations have been struck by a bug that makes it impossible to render any of the expected resolutions and frame rates. Instead, all they get is a black screen on the TV or monitor.

As it happens, PS5 might actually be safe from this problem since it does use a different HDMI implementation, but it is difficult to know for sure until the console units are used by people with the buggy AV receivers.

Allegedly, the cause of the problems is a known bug in the Panasonic Solutions HDMI chips the AV receivers use (Panasonic Solutions is now owned by Nuvoton Technology). The bug apparently affects the way HDMI 2.1’s Fixed Rate Link (FRL) feature works – and unfortunately, early investigations suggest that the problem cannot be fixed by a mere firmware update.

Lists of the impacted Marantz, Denon and Yamaha receivers can be found here, here and here respectively.