Is my beaglebone black wireless busted?

[Dijital]

I cannot find an answer to this anywhere.

If you take a bbb wireless out of the box, plug in an hdmi and plug in a power cable, is it supposed to boot into linux? It seems like it ships with a linux distro already flashed, but I can't find any sign of it. My 1080p monitor just shows a black screen, no noise, flickering, or anything. The pamphlet in the box seems to imply it should, but the "getting started" tutorial says nothing on the matter.

I tried flashing the latest kernal but the bb just seems to hang and never finish (i left is flashing for 6 hours). Also the wiki gives linux commands to adjust in ordere to force it to flash on boot, but without any sort of video output, im not sure how I am supposed to edit the settings. I'm usually pretty technically adept, but this thing has got me stumped.

[rstofer]

You didn't mention the microSD card.  In theory, BBB boots from the microSD.  There used to be a time when they would flash the image but it bricked too many boards.  Read about it here:

https://beagleboard.org/latest-images

[sam1275]

Do your bbb have heartbeat/CPU/MMC LED?
I have a no-wireless bbb, and I didn't try HDMI yet, but it boot well, it response to USB and Ethernet by default, and flash a new firmware takes about 10 minutes I remember.
Good luck.