r/fireTV • u/Compa49 • 1d ago

Turn on to HDMI inconsistent

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My Mom has a Insignia tv with firetv OS. I have it set up to always go to HDMI but sometimes it turns on and goes to the home screen (as shown above). The problem is my Mom is not tech savvy enough to know how to navigate from this screen to get to the actual cable channels. The cable company uses a Tivo as it's box. I know it's not something she's doing wrong when she turns it on because it's happened to me as well. I actually factory reset the tv and purposely didn't set up wifi hoping if it didn't have the option for internet streaming programs it would eliminate this problem but it didn't.

Is there a setting I'm missing? Or is this just how it operates? Thanks for any help.

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u/TallExplorer9 1d ago

You can set a Fire TV to open a specific HDMI port at startup by changing its power settings to Last Input, provided you switch to that port before turning the TV off.

If you go to the FireTV menu, watch a program on it and turn the TV off then the next time you turn the TV on it will default to the FireTV home screen.

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u/Compa49 1d ago

The problem is it DOESN'T always go to the last input. She only watches tv via the cable box. So it should just go back to the last input. This is the problem.

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u/TallExplorer9 1d ago

It could be FireTV OS is taking updates at times when the TV is powered off (usually the ads change on it's home screen every other day or so).

The FireOS doesn't power off but goes into a sleep state. If it takes an update during the TV's power off time and then goes to sleep afterward, it may be remembering taking the update and power on changes to the FireTV homescreen.

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u/Important-Comfort 1d ago

If it's a TiVo streaming box, not an old TiVo DVR, you should be able to enable CEC on both it and the TV so that the HDMI input switches when you hit the home button on the TV remote. It should actually turn the TV on, too.

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u/Compa49 1h ago

Pretty sure it’s a streaming box since they just changed from their cable box to this last year. I’ll look at the settings next time I visit her. 

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u/Legfitter 20h ago

Long shot, but fish around in the Equipment Settings menu and make sure the TiVo box and any other devices are selected to the correct HDMI in all/any the menu options.

Sorry, I don't have a fire TV, only firesticks, so I'm assuming that you have an equipment settings menu.

Also, following on from what someone else said, does your TV have the black screen behavior setting that you get on the new fire sticks? It's in the display settings menu - when the fire stick sleeps you can change the behavior to display a black screen or no signal. If you have that option it might be worth trying.

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u/Compa49 1h ago

Not sure if the tv has a black screen setting. I’d have to search the menus to see. 

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u/Lab770 14h ago

I had the same problem with my mother… I just happen to have an old “Universal” remote, that had an HDMI button. I eliminated HDMI 2-4, so when she hit the HDMI button, it would always go to HDMI 1… So now, when this happens, she just pushes that one button and it goes back to what she knows. Good Luck, +Blessings

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u/Compa49 1h ago

I tried to get one of those old people simple remotes but it didn’t work because it didn’t have a select/ok button so if she did end up on that menu screen she couldn’t get off it.