Do you have screen resolution set as ‘Automatic’? If so manually set it to 4k (or whatever you prefer) and see if that fixes it
Thank you for the suggestion. I may have set it to automatic at some point. This black screen issue just cropped up recently.
Good idea suggested by Thunderpands about your resolution. Definitely worth a try.
For reference, here are my display settings on my AM9 Pro, and I haven’t had any issues. Might want to try some of these:
Display & Sound:
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Resolution > 4K (60 Hz)
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Text Scaling > Default to 100%
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Advanced Display Settings:
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Buffer Frame Size > 1920x1080
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Color mode: YCbCR422 12bit
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Video Picture Settings:
- Additional Settings > Amlogic super scaling
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Preferred Dynamic Range > Force Conversion > Always to Dolby Vision
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I just checked and I do have the screen resolution set to 4k @ 60 Hz. But thank you for the suggestion.
Thank you @wcr5jop1! I will look at that tonight. and report back.
@wcr5jop1 GREAT NEWS! Your advice helped solve the issue. Connecting to the modum is not an option.
I force stopped “System Update”, cleared its cache and rebooted and then tried to update. Bupkus. I decided to revert back to 2.0.8 and then see moving forward if it would prompt updates back to 2.0.9 and ideally 2.1.0.
Viola! It worked. I reverted back, it prompted update to 2.0.9 which subsquently prompted updat to the current 2.1.0.
I reckon it was a combo of stuff but your clearing the system update cache I suspect was the driver.
Thank you.
Great news. Happy this worked for you!
@wcr5jop1 So now since I’ve updated to the latest software, my AM9 has restarted two or three times totally on its own for no reason. Nice 
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@wcr5jop1, Thank you so much for your info on setting up the "Display & Sound. While it didn’t resolve the crashing problem, it seems to have cleared up the blank screen issue, so far. There was a bonus though. When I originally installed the VPN Monitor Dot, the dot was literally half the size of the normal dot. Crazy, huh? That was a plus for me! Thank you for that.
Hi All. I have the normal AM9.Just wondered if having DV as well as HDR is a really big plus in terms of picture quality from the DV ?
Thanks in advance.
Also thanks for the box settings outlined in previous posts, will give them a try out !
It all depends on which versions of HDR your TV supports - most support the older HLG format but with the newer HDR formats some manufacturers only support one of HDR/HDR10+ or DV, whereas others e.g. HiSense seem to support all formats
If you were to watch identical material in HDR10+ and DV, which one you prefer is likely to be a matter of personal preference as both do the job very well (reviewers will claim that they can see differences but they tend to use very high-end equipment and are watching in light-controlled environments)
While HDR10/HDR10+ and DV are both improvements on HLG, the best advice is to base your choice on a format that your TV supports - there’s little point in buying a box that supports DV if your TV only supports HDR10/HDR10+ or, if an older TV, only HLG
Thanks, this post just changed my life. I’ve had my SK1 for over a year and when I got it the color mode was set on 420 10 bit so after reading your post I decided to try your setting to see if anything changed. What a difference I can actually see. Crazy color with so much more depth and clarity so I got Geminis take on it and was astounded. She or it also recommended the setting you had but I was shocked to see her definition of why. So for anyone who doesn’t know about this I thought I’d post it.
The Quick Answer
If your TV supports HDR (High Dynamic Range), you want a 10-bit or 12-bit option. If it is a standard 4K TV without HDR, 8-bit is standard.
Here are the two best recommendations based on your usage:
Option 1: YCbCr422 12bit (Best for HDR/Dolby Vision movies and shows)
Why: This gives you the highest bit depth (12-bit), which provides smoother color gradients and prevents “color banding” (where distinct lines show up in skies or shadows). The 4:2:2 chroma subsampling is excellent for video content.
Option 2: YCbCr420 10bit (Your current selection)
Why: If you leave it here, you are perfectly fine. 10-bit is the exact native format for standard HDR10 content (which most 4K streaming services use). It uses less HDMI bandwidth than 12-bit, making it very stable.
What do these numbers actually mean?
If you are curious about the technical jargon on your screen, it breaks down into two parts:
Term What it handles What to look for
Chroma (4:4:4 vs 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0) Color detail. 4:4:4 is uncompressed (best for computer text). 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 compress color data slightly because the human eye can’t easily tell the difference in video. Almost all movies and TV shows are filmed and streamed in 4:2:0.
Bit Depth (8bit vs 10bit vs 12bit) Color precision. 8-bit displays about 16.7 million colors. 10-bit displays over 1 billion colors. 12-bit displays 68 billion colors. Higher is better for vibrant picture quality and smooth shading.
How to test it
Switch the setting to YCbCr422 12bit.
Play a high-quality video.
If the screen goes black, flickers, or says “No Signal,” it means your HDMI cable or your TV can’t handle the high bandwidth required for 12-bit. If that happens, don’t worry—the system will usually revert back automatically, or you can just change it back to your current setting, YCbCr420 10bit, which is a highly compatible sweet spot for 4K streaming.
PapaS this is such great info. Something to help wade through so much technical foreign language. Thank you, so much, for posting it.
As an addendum to the information from @wcr5jop1 and @PapaS … if you’re going to try this you need to ensure that the TV HDMI port that you’re connected to is set to accept greater than 8-bit colour information
LG call the setting ‘HDMI Ultra HD Deep Color’, Samsung ‘Input Signal Plus’ and Sony ‘Enhanced Signal Format’ (names may have changed slightly)
The setting can usually be turned on/off individually for each HDMI port and more modern TVs may have it enabled by default
Excellent, just out of luck I had turned them on a while back just because it sounded good, I always like “plus,” thanks for the clarity. 
Sorry to hear that you’re experiencing these issues. I’ve also had issues with random / periodic crashing on my AM9 Pro (across 3 different firmware versions). I’ll just be watching Tivimate, and it’ll randomly shut down. It doesn’t happen all the time, but is definitely a frustrating thing (especially if you’re watching LIVE content). As good as the hardware is on these Ugoos devices, I hope that they’ll figure out how to make the software-side a bit more stable. Clearly with the frequency of these version updates, they’re trying to address it. Hopefully they’ll eventually figure it out… 
WOW! then I’m not the only one experiencing random crashes.
Count me in the club with my AM9 Pro. Mine goes into flutter mode where the screen blinks rapidly. It almost looks like a software infinite loop? Rebooting stops it til the next time.
@MNBob I think that they call that “juttering”. You might want to look at your settings. Now what settings you should look at, I can’t say for sure. But you might want to compare what wcr5jop1 listed as his display setting above to see you have a setting way off.
Something that’s worth trying (if you haven’t already) is turning off Automatic Resolution and fixing it at 4k (or whatever your TV likes) - I noticed that the last update reset mine to ‘Automatic’ and I had to change it back to 4k