Secure HDCP Link not found on XBox 360

By | 1 March, 2009

I’m a fan of the XBox 360, the price these days for a combined DVD, Media center Extender and games console is so low its hard not to be, however every once in a while an issue that comes up that isn’t necessarily easily explained out there in Cyberspace.

This morning, my sons and I wanted to resume a DVD that we we’re watching yesterday and we got the dreaded “Secure HDCP Link not found” error message. We could hear sound, but we just got the Xbox logo. HDCP is a copy protection mechanism that is part of the HDMI specification.

Having a quick look around the internet, it seems this is not an uncommon problem and people found it difficult to place the blame between their TV or the XBox, in my opinion the answer is both. I tried disconnecting cables, eject/inserting the dvd switching the TV off and on again, to no avail.

From the breakdown of the HDCP process, there’s a handshake that occurs between console and TV and it has to happen within a certain amount of time. Knowing my TV has from time to time needed to be fully powered off and cold started again, I tried that and everything seemed to return to normal.

So the lesson here is if in doubt do a full reboot of all your systems, and that means things that aren’t computers too (And by that I mean pull the plug on all of them and reconnect. Off these days rarely means off).

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