I have a Yamaha 5860 receiver and have noticed that when the Comcast HD Motorola box is off but the receiver is on that it blinks like it can't decide what surround mode to choose. Every thing else works and sounds great. It doesn't do this on any other components but the cable box and the cable box does it on any of the optical inputs I have tried. Is this normal? It doesn't blink when the cable box is on. Just making sure nothing was wrong with my new receiver. Any help is very much appreciated. Thanks...
Anon: could just be the Comcast HD box. Other people are complaining about the "popping" sound when changing channels. That HD box must be still sending something over the optical wire that the Yammie can't figure out. Most cable boxes are "on" even when they are off. I'm not suggesting that you look directly into your Optical out of your Comast HD box, but you may notice that even though your box is off, it is still emitting an infrared signal.