Just about how screwed is my TV?
Hey dudes, not sure if there is anything that can be done to help here. I've talked about how great my cheap Taiwanese brand (Heran) TV is before, well now it seems it's not so great!
Basically, it keeps turning itself on and off in some kind of boot loop or something. It sometimes stays off, sometimes just spontaneously turns itself on, but always turns off again before showing an image. I've only had the machine 2 years, and something like this did happen before about a year ago. Last time I fixed it by unplugging the machine half way through the boot loop. I tried that again, but it didn't work this time.
It's not all bad. I can trick the tv into staying on, so I can still play my games for now. What I do is I use the buttons on the TV to access the TV menu just before the TV has a chance to turn itself off. Remote inputs are not recognized during the boot loop. For some reason, this keeps the TV on for long enough for me to turn on my game, and once the game is running the TV functions normally. I have only tested this method with HDMI input, not sure if it would also work with AV, I'll test that later.
So... How screwed is my TV? Any ideas for fixes? How long until my little trick stops working and the TV is truly fucked? Who knows?!
Basically, it keeps turning itself on and off in some kind of boot loop or something. It sometimes stays off, sometimes just spontaneously turns itself on, but always turns off again before showing an image. I've only had the machine 2 years, and something like this did happen before about a year ago. Last time I fixed it by unplugging the machine half way through the boot loop. I tried that again, but it didn't work this time.
It's not all bad. I can trick the tv into staying on, so I can still play my games for now. What I do is I use the buttons on the TV to access the TV menu just before the TV has a chance to turn itself off. Remote inputs are not recognized during the boot loop. For some reason, this keeps the TV on for long enough for me to turn on my game, and once the game is running the TV functions normally. I have only tested this method with HDMI input, not sure if it would also work with AV, I'll test that later.
So... How screwed is my TV? Any ideas for fixes? How long until my little trick stops working and the TV is truly fucked? Who knows?!
Comments
This sounds like a mainboard problem to me. It could also be the power supply. But I would wager the former. On top of that, I give 50/50 odds of the PSU being a separate part from the board these days, for cheap items if not all TVs.
Even if you win there, you have another gauntlet to run of repair cost vs replacement. It might very well be cheaper, and easier, to get the whole new thing.
If I can keep tricking the TV into working, then I should probably just keep doing that, right? I mean, the TV is fully functional apart from this weird boot loop problem. If I can get it to work, and keep it working in this way, do I risk doing further damage to the TV? I mean I'm sure it is a risk, but how big of one? At this point I don't really care that much about the TV, but is there anyway that it could harm any of my devices and/or systems plugged into it?
Could be a bad cap(s)? You might have to find someone who's good with electronics to see if they can fix it. It's easier (Not saying it's easy, just easier) to fix if it's more hardware oriented than software. If you have a TV that has a random bad OS or something, you might as well get a new TV.
Definitely strikes me more as a software issue, and yes this is a budget no name brand SMART TV, so it does have a terrible, slow garbage custom OS.
Being so new, and working mostly flawlessly for hundreds of hours, and still working properly if I can trick it into staying on (which is a consistent, repeatable thing btw)... Just makes it seem like a software problem. Otherwise, it would shut off randomly or flicker or show other inconsistent behaviour, I would guess, like if there really is a problem with the PSU or caps?
Funny, I am now playing N64 on a TV that I have to trick into working, just like when I was a kid I had this tiny secondhand TV with a weird issue where it wouldn't power on unless it warmed up first. But I found a way to like repeatedly push the power button on, and then hold it in a certain way so that it would turn on more quickly... Gremlins!
I recently got a tcl ruko tv, extremeky satisfied with it from a gaming perspective as well as software os.