Solved! How can I prevent Windows from reacting when my son turns on the TV?

[Bat123Man]

I have a PC with a 6GB 1060 GPU. There is an ultra-wide on the desk, and I ran a 35-foot HDMI cable through the ceiling so that I can use the 65-inch Roku TV as an output if I want to. The cable connects to the back of an LG Soundbar, which in turn is connected via HDMI to the TV. It all works well, I just switch between them using the Windows + P shortcut.

However, when the TV is off and my son is using the PC, his brother will come along and turn the TV on to watch something. The PC always reacts. Usually the screen goes black for a few seconds and then comes back. Or else the game he is playing freezes for a second and then he ends up back on the desktop. He can alt-tab back to his game, but it always seems to happen at a critical moment when he is battling someone online. Often he flicks back to find his character has been slain.

As a result, he has started to regularly unplug the HDMI cable from the soundbar. That works, his brother can turn on the TV with no ill effect, but re-plugging in the HDMI whenever I want to output something to the TV (usually to use Hue Sync) is a total pain. The HDMI port on the soundbar is pretty inconveniently placed in a recess on the back, and I am worried about wear on the HDMI cable with the constant unplugging / replugging. The ceiling is no longer open, so running this cable was a one-time thing.

Does anyone know of a way to overcome this problem? A Windows setting to avoid automatic detection of another HDMI output? Or maybe a physical HDMI switch box, would that work? We could leave it set to OFF until we wanted to use the HDMI port, and then flick it to ON ?

 

[Mr Evil]

We have a similar sort of setup, with a TV used for both watching TV and connected as a monitor. The HDMI cable goes from the PC to a receiver, and as long as the receiver is not set to the PC's input, the PC doesn't react to anything the TV does. I expect a simple HDMI switch box would work just as well.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, get an inexpensive HDMI switch.

 

[Bat123Man]

Hmmm, ok, thanks. I'll order one and see if that improves the situation.

@MR. Evil - I have the HDMI cable plugged into the back of the Soundbar. You have to switch the soundbar to HDMI IN on the front panel to actually get output from the TV. But that is not the default. When the soundbar is turned on, it assumes you want sound coming from the TV and auto-selects that input. But just sitting down on the sofa and turning on the TV is enough to cause the hiccup on the PC.

I'll try an HDMI switch, one with a mechanical switch to select output.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

If you open the Nvidia Control panel, you can navigate to a section where you get to enable/disable the connected displays via a checkbox. If you disable the TV while it is on and connected, the TV will be ignored until the control panel is entered to re-enable the TV. The TV will have to be on to re-enable it as well.

It's not super convenient but it's easier than physically plugging and unplugging the TV.

 

[Bat123Man]

OOOOh, that certainly sounds worth a try! Tks.

 

[Bat123Man]

Pretty sure that worked. We'll keep trying it out, but we also made a discovery. The 1060 GTX has multiple outputs but only 1 of them is HDMI. I needed to use a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter to plug in both the ultrawidescreen and the TV. The GPU insisted that the TV plugged in via the DP adapter was output 1, and the monitor via HDMI was output 2. No amount of fiddling changed the numbering, so we swapped the HDMI cables instead; plugged the monitor into the DP-adapter and the TV into HDMI. That made the monitor Output 1. Then we selected that checkbox in the Nvidia control panel, and disabled the TV. Now there is no hiccup on the monitor when his brother turns on the TV.

We'll keep monitoring it (ha! Dad joke there..) but pretty sure that fixed it. Thanks.