I ran into another problem with my Chromecast. This time it appears to be happening to others, and I saw it affectionately referred to as “Pink Screen of Death”.
My first issue isn’t really with the Chromecast itself, but with it’s compatibility with my older TV. I have a 5 or 6 year old Sony TV that has 4 HDMI ports on it, but it seems to have issues with certain resolutions or frame rates or something… It will intermittently not show a picture. Well actually at this point it will intermittently show a picture because it does nothing more than it shows the picture. (I am guessing it is the TV because it does the same thing with my OUYA.)
So my solution was to move it up to the bedroom, which is also a good excuse to use that TV more. That TV is a Visio, just about a year old and it seemed to hook right up and work normally. That is, until I tried to cast a Chrome tab from my Windows 8 PC.
That’s when the screen went all pink. The audio was fine, and I could see the picture, just barely. I restarted the browser, changed HDMI ports, and nothing worked. I was about to give up and just watch the dumb video n the computer when I decided to switch Chrome into Windows 8 mode. That immediately corrected the issue.
I found a few other resolutions across the Internets, so I thought I would share those below:
- Reboot computer
- Close all instances of Chrome (check system tray) and restart browser
- Uncheck Chrome setting (in menu near the bottom) labeled “Use hardware acceleration when available.”