Orange Pi RV2 no boot with SD card – acts like a useless brick

When I boot my Orange Pi without a microSD card, the screen shows:

Orange Pi initializing bootloader

Cool. At least something shows up.

But the second I insert a microSD card with Official Orange Pi Ubuntu images

• Nothing. Just a black screen — no HDMI signal, nothing.
• The LED stays solid red like it's pretending to be alive.
• No network activity. Ethernet LED's on, but no IP anywhere. It’s not even trying.

Honestly, this is ridiculous. It clearly detects the SD card — because the bootloader doesn’t even appear anymore — but then just sits there like a brick. What the hell is this supposed to be?

I've flashed it clean, tried multiple images, checked cables, reformatted everything like five times. Same result every damn time. It’s not booting. It’s not outputting anything. It’s just wasting my time.

If there’s some magic combination of image, voodoo, or HDMI ritual I’m supposed to know about, it’d be great if it was documented somewhere, because right now this whole thing is acting like complete garbage.