RaspPi 3 unresponsive after HDMI cable swap

Question

I’m running Kodi on a RaspPi3 as a media centre solution. The HDMI cable feeds into a 4-port HDMI switch to allow access to various other devices. I have a TV and a projector so that I have to change the HDMI cable at the switch’s out-port depending on whether I want to use one or the other. (I have tried chaining in another HDMI switch but one of the other media devices, an AppleTV, does not like that).

Whenever I change the HDMI out cable, the RaspPi becomes unresponsive so that I have to hard reset it (i.e. cut the power).

Why is that? Maybe because projector and TV have different resolutions (1080p and 720p)? Any way I can avoid this problem?

Answer 1

You pretty much answered your own question in a roundabout way.

When HDMI is disconnected, the Pi will revert to the settings configured in /boot/config.txt as shown here:

VIDEO OPTIONS IN CONFIG.TXT (raspberrypi.org)

The Pi will adjust to different settings at boot time to match a connected monitor, though. So it tries to make sure you have a good image on-screen.

It simply is not built to handle changes on the fly.

So it may not even be that the two devices are different from each other as much as it is that one or both are not the same as the default configuration.