Sounds like the US box module in the BS 1 has failed.

it is strange - I can see the source and if i change the volume, but when i select the menu, the screen goes dark. do you still think the US box is bad?

Sounds like the classic tell tale symptoms of the US box failing. Time to call service. 

well, that is annoying as I only have had it for 9 months. I doubt it will be cost effective to get it looked at or fixed.

Thanks all for the response.

Jim 

BTW, there are certain Samsung blu-ray players that are impossible to use with the BeoSystem 1. This is because the main menu of the blu-ray player always defaults back to 480i and thus loses the signal connection with the BeoSystem 1.

so i let the Beosystem 1 stay on with the menu selected for a period of time and suddenly the menu came on a second at a time and then gone again. this pattern repeated - off for 5-10 seconds and then on for 1 sec. with this I was able to put the external sources back in again, so the audio inputs became active again, so it is working for now - at least until next time... 

I did try 2 different monitors, As mentioned I am only using the audio part - not even the PUC. I am using lintronic for the remote control.

If you were interested in using the PUC, it might be useful to know that if you find a programmable HDMI switcher, you can have the BeoSystem 1 handle switching the HDMI inputs by having the switcher learn the Zektor switch IR triggers. I once found a Monster HDMI switch that could learn IR commands and it handled this beautifully.

Yes, I looked into the Monster HDMI Switch. The main reasons I am not using the PUC are : 1) it is not flexible enough. For example I am using V.AUX for an audio source with toslink and when I select V.AUX I need the source to change and the speaker to go to Stereo, so I need 3 commands to be fired. I have not found a way to have the number of speakers set  by source by default. 2) I like to be able to control my system from my iphone and the Lintronic box is very easy to interface with.