I’ve been setting up a small media PC on a laptop for my mother. Everything works great except for the HDMI. The screen comes up just fine, but every time it boots or suspends, the HDMI audio doesn’t work.
It’s not that it doesn’t see the HDMI; it’s right there in the audio config and selected. It just doesn’t output anything to it.
To get it work again requires:
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Running VLC
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Changing the VLC audio device to the laptop speakers
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Once sound comes from the speakers, changing the device again to one of the HDMI ports (there are three). It’s always random which one of the ports will output through the TV. Could be device 1, could be 3, could be 2. It’s a lottery!
After that, it works normally.
And, yes, this absolutely requires VLC. Attempting to do the same through the audio settings or pavucontrol (which I installed out of desperation even though MATE no longer seems to utilize PulseAudio directly) will simply result in the sound stubbornly not working at all until a full reboot.
After searching around, I found some vague references to pipewire spazzing out due to some kind of power saving thing and disabled it from releasing the audio device on suspend, but that doesn’t seem to help at all.
Any ideas?
