I got, as a bonus, an LCD HDTV. It’s a 37" 720P model - not what I would have picked, but free is free.
So, I get this thing in late September or so, connect it to my UPS for power, and connect it via VGA to my Media Center PC. Everything works just fine.
Eventually, I decide to see if I can get some unencrypted QAM channels and plug our basic cable into a splitter and run it from the wall to the two tuner cards on the PC and the one CATV in on the back of the TV.
Some time passes - maybe a week, maybe just a few days. I turn the TV off, and that’s it. It won’t come back on. You’ve got the red LED on the front of the unit that glows happily, and when I press the power button the LED turns green. That’s it. No backlighting on the screen, no audio, no nothing.
I go through Viewsonic’s ARA process. I can honestly say that I’ve never dealt with a bigger bunch of backward-ass incompetents in my life. I deal with vendors who I absolutely KNOW that, before I call them, I will be screaming at them by the end of the phone call - and I would far prefer them to the excruciating experience that is Viewsonic “Customer Service”. (Here’s a hint - if you follow the options for “warranty” you’ll literally be on hold for hours - if you just press “1” for English and let it sit, you’ll get to someone in under 20 minutes).
And I get the second TV. I plug it up to the VGA, the CATV, and power. It runs for about fifteen minutes before my daughter, at a lovely 15 months old, presses the power button.
Yup. Won’t turn back on.
Another 10 or so hours on the phone (I shit you not - talk to one of those guys and ask who their manager is. They can give you a title, but not a name. Ask who their manager’s boss is and they can’t even give you a title) I get a third TV.
I pretty much know what’s going to happen. I’ve got a pretty well-formulated theory. I have an electrician friend check the outlet and everything seems fine. I plug it into the AC power (not the UPS!) and VGA on Friday night. It works fine. Sunday afternoon I decide I’d like to see some NFL in glorious Hi-Def. And it works fine. I know the TV is a dead man, but, well, what the hell good is a TV that you can’t plug in?
Then bedtime, when the little woman comes into the bedroom and tells me that the remote won’t turn the TV off, so she thought I’d probably want to look at it. At this point, I should probably explain that one of the two other symptoms I’d noticed was that pre-mortem the system would start responding to the remote control very poorly. You could change inputs or channels or turn it off, but you’d have to hit the button a bunch of times for it to notice. So, I manage to turn the thing off with the remote.
We all know what happened next.
TV number four is currently on the way from Dipshit Central (or, as it’s saved in my cell phone, “Viewsonic pigfuckers”). I’m moving in two weeks, so once I get the damned thing I have no intention of plugging it into anything until I move. So, it’s pretty likely that the problem will vanish once I move.
But what has been happening to these TVs? I’ve checked for voltage on the cable, and it’s not like theres anything my meter can detect. It’s not like there’s lightning shooting down the power lines, because I’ve got a PC, a receiver, a Wii, and there used to be a CRT on that outlet (actually there is now, too). None of that stuff has ever died. I have lived here for 3 years, and had a couple cable boxes connected to both the power and CATV and no deaths. There’s a TV in the bedroom, connected to the same cable circuit, and it’s fine.
Any of the brilliant minds on the SDMB have any idea?
-Joe