My Apple TV screen goes black (but with audio) about half the time — but, strangely, it’s only with the Apple TV+ show Down Cemetery Road. It’s only with the Apple TV app, only with that show, but it happens with every episode of that show.
Anybody else have this haunting experience?
Colin
I just spent weeks trying to figure out why when I watch training classes, my two external displays keep going black (but with audio). The displays are connected via DisplayPort to a Thunderbolt dock, connected to a Lenovo Thinkpad.
The AI and I had a whole lot of theories about what was going on: bad cables, drivers in the dock, contention with other activity, Nvidia drivers, problems in Chrome, an Ethernet cable that was connected but without an DHCP server, and many more.
But what it turned out to be was HDCP, combined with Udemy online classes. Udemy’s videos use DRM, establishing a HDCP connection to the displays. When this gets disrupted, the displays black out. The fix was to turn off graphics acceleration in the browser, so it decodes the video in software.
So… maybe you have a HDCP problem.
I am enjoying the show! I haven’t had total black out but sometimes the screen goes foggy for a few seconds. It looks like a video/cable problem but I suspect it is actually a streaming issue. Maybe it is more serious for you?
Can’t quite get why it would only be with one show via one app. Some junk somewhere. I wonder if doing a system update check on the AppleTV, updating if needed, then powering all down, including the TV. I’d detach, possibly swap out, the HDMI cable. Count to ten and then reassemble. See.
Since updating to tvOS 26, one of my Apple TV devices will occasionally flash a black screen while watching a show. Haven’t seen it happen since updating, though. And my other Apple TV devices never exhibited the problem, just one of them 
The only things I can think of:
Otherwise, I agree, I would expect to see the problem all over the place.
Do you watch each episode at the same time on the same day and use Wi-Fi to connnect the Apple TV box to the Internet or use AirPlay? If so, perhaps something around you that happens at the same time is interfering/competing with your Wi-Fi signal.
The weirdly specific interruptions are likely caused by Wi-Fi polling at 5GHz.
In my case, the blackouts began at the time Xfinity upgraded our cable “modem” to 5GHz. They would occur only on some streamed material, but not all — on two Prime programs, for example, but not Hulu, and so on.
What led me to suspect the 5GHz is the regularity of the interruptions. I set the Apple TV to access via hardwired Ethernet only — no Wi-Fi. That did not solve the problem. What finally did solve it was moving the Apple TV box to 5 feet away from the base station. No more blackouts.
(Almost as good was enclosing the Apple TV in a homemade Faraday cage.)
Given that the show is coming out of the London office, the next Mick Herron adaptation after Slow Horses, and given Apple’s emergence as the top streamer in terms of quality, it’s certainly going to be demanding on bandwidth. I wonder if the Liquid Glass implementation of the AppleTV app is possibly something that adds to the demands on the device.
That said it’s working in our house, that and Pluribus are the two new big shows and both look great on our projector. Possibly something local in the end…
Thanks. I’ve already down the power-downs (but not cable swap), with no effect. I should say that the only thing that helps is setting the ATV video settings to SDR — which I don’t like because it makes film look like videotape.
I’ve got it connected with Ethernet, so no problem there.
Come to think if it, we did get a few blackouts on “Slow Horses,” but only a few times, whereas this is every time — which didn’t happen on the first couple of “Cemetery Road” episodes. There might be something to the popularity idea…
Don’t forget that a strong Wi-Fi signal can interfere with box performance even if you have it set to use Ethernet only.
That’s weird, @nextstep. How does that work?
I have observed a strong 5GHz signal near an Apple TV interfere with the Ethernet signal. I know that sounds weird, but the phenomenon disappears with shielding of the Apple TV box and cable, or moving the box 5 feet or more away from the router that is causing the interference. Move the box away, the blackouts go away; move the box close to the router, and, bingo, dropouts.
I have an AppleTV and have seen short screen blackouts on some shows on HBO from time to time. They usually last about five seconds. Audio is not affected as I recall. Doesn’t happen with every show or even all the time with the same show.
I had this occur while watching Slow Horses S5. It was reproducible, too. Episode 2, 15 minutes in, as they go up the lift. It occurred other times as well, but that was the moment I started poking around to resolve it. Disabling HDR was the solution.
I have also experienced this “black screen” effect, but I haven’t started Down Cemetary Road yet. It happened while watching Family Plan and Family Plan 2, and once during an episode of Slow Horses. My Apple TV4K has a direct ethernet connection to the router/fiber optic line. I dunno
Donnie
That’s what I did, but then it looks like it was shot on video instead of film — though to be honest, after about 5 minutes I stop noticing.
Interesting. So it might actually be your cables
HDR (especially using protocols like Dolby Vision, but also the older HDR10) uses more bandwidth in order to carry the video data (10 or 12 bits per pixel-color-component, vs. 8 bits for SDR).
If some part of your equipment can’t handle the extra bandwidth, you’ll see a black screen. And if your cables are able to handle the bandwidth for 8-bit but not 10- or 12-bit data, you may find intermittent drop-outs, due to marginal signal quality arriving at the TV.
Looking at Wikipedia’s table of HDMI resolution and frequency limits, we can see the required bandwidth for various common SDR and HDR10 resolutions. (12-bit isn’t presented, but we can multiply the SDR bandwidths by 1.5 to get that figure.)
If you’re streaming a 4Kp60 video, that will require 12.5 Gbit/s for SDR, 15.7 Gbit/s for HDR10 or 18.9 Gbit/s for 12-bit.
A High Speed HDMI cable is certified for 10.2 Gbit/s, and won’t be able to reliably carry any of the above. A Premium High Speed cable is certified for 18 Gbit/s, and should be able to carry the SDR or HDR10 signals, but a Dolby Vision (12-bit) signal will be slightly beyond that limit - this may result in a signal too degraded for your TV to reliably display, causing the periodic dropouts.
Which implies that you have a few options:
FWIW, on my setup, if I route 4K video through my Onkyo receiver, it works with SDR and HDR10, but I get a black screen (and an error on its display) when using DolbyVision. The 12-bit video is either exceeding the receiver’s bandwidth or it simply can’t support 12-bit video (it generates on-screen overlay content for its various menus). Because of this, I changed my cabling, so my Apple TV connects directly to the TV, routing its audio back to the receiver using ARC. My other devices (Blu-Ray player, game console, etc.) still go through the receiver.