Connecting Cable/Satellite to ATEM TV Studio HD via HDMI

We are installing an entire system of Black Magic gear into our building to upgrade from analog to digital video. Our primary switching device is now the ATEM TV Studio HD which has 4 HDMI inputs and 4 SDI inputs.

Our cable box has component out, composite out, and HDMI out. Due to the limitations by HDCP, we are trying to find a solution that allows us to have the full-HD signal from the HDMI output of the cable box. Research shows that many people have used HDMI splitters to perform the HDCP handshake while allowing the feed to be distributed as desired.

This solution has worked in a couple other situations that don't have the ATEM TV Studio HD -- but now we are running into a strange issue. When the splitter is in-line between the cable box and the ATEM, we get audio into the ATEM but the screen is black and doesn't display the HDCP error. This seems to indicate that the handshake is happening but the video signal isn't being processed correctly. However, when connecting to a monitor display, we get clean video -- it's just not showing up on the ATEM.

Troubleshooting steps we have already tried:

1. A different brand of splitter.
2. All possible combinations of plugging in the cables.
3. Connecting the cable box to a TV with the splitter (everything works).
4. Swapping out the HDMI cables.

Prob. a resolution error.

The output of the cable box has to match the resolution set in the Atem.

Hit the info button on the monitor to see if it returns the output settings that the box is
sending into it, then if poss. setup the Atem for the same Res.

Atem doesn't do HDCP. So you will not see an error either.. And yes audio does work.. As that is not blocked by the HDMI chipset in the Atem.

I can't recommend anything based on HDMI.. As not a lot of those solutions really work reliable.. i do own some chinese converters that are worst case senario problem solvers when it comes to HDCP as they don't care about hdcp..

Some other brand has a switch inside to fix this.. But hit search on the forum.. There are hints out there what gear to use..

What i could recommend you is take Component HD and use a Atomos Multi2SDI converter. Works like a charme

I've said this before, but we use the cheap china HDMI to SDI converters for a fleet of DirecTV boxes to feed our BMD 40x40 router. It's been running for over 2 years now and luckily we haven't had 1 converter die yet, but they do honor HDCP and convert HDMI to SDI reliably. The ones we picked up were on Newegg. That said, I wouldn't trust these to push a camera ~300 ft which I why we have BMD, Aja and Decimator converters as well.