This afternoon, I was at my desk working. Suddenly sound from the other room. Then Trump’s and Musk’s voices. It was the unwelcome live broadcast from the Oval Office that is elsewhere a topic of discussion tonight.
That TV had not been switched on in weeks. The remote had not been touched in weeks. The TV has sat there for over a decade and has never once before switched on by itself.
What can explain this strange occurrence at such a time?
There are likely many possible explanations.
One laptop I owned had an infrared sensor. I discovered that every time the laptop turned on, it would change my television to channel 17.
After a bunch of people in my apartment complex put in Dish satellite receivers, I got static on many channels. It was odd static. Eventually, I realized that the static was images from satellite channels. My television was connected only to a VHF/UHF antenna with amplifier.
I now own a flatscreen tv. The movers packed the remote separately whene they packed my living room. I bought a replacement on Amazon. The television and the remote mostly work fine. At times, the television will spontaneously switch from what I am watching to the channel guide. It will also sometimes spontaneously switch from whatever I am watching to channel 2.
To sump up, your television is strange and wonderful. We should love it, fear it and offer it sacrifices.
All I could think of was the TV remote battle scene in E.T. Neighbors controlling each other’s channel switching with their remotes. I thought that wasn’t supposed to be possible any more.
If the remote for a car works on other cars, it is obviously a security issue. If a neighbor’s remote works on your tv, it is just an inconvenience. Additionally, considering that tv remote controls often get lost or broken, it makes sense to make them easy to replace. My new remote is connected to my flatscreen in non obvious ways. The main advantage of this seems to be that I get an onscreen warning when the batteries in the remote are low.
The what?
The 1982 film E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. Early in the film is a scene with neighbors changing each other’s channel with their remotes.
No, there isn’t.
Unexplained occurrences like this can usually be blamed on a cat. Do you harbour such a creature on your premises?
The vast majority of remotes are infrared (basically, invisible light) so not subject to interference from neighbours, though potentially subject to interference from other infrared remotes. Some might be Bluetooth but interference is still unlikely.
True story here…
When I was a teenager a friend had an old plasma globe. I big one, you know, one of these things.
Anyway, it had more than an on/off switch. It had a couple of dials to control the plasma. I think one controlled how wide it spread and another controlled how bright/strong it was.
Anyway, he had it hooked up in his living room and we were fooling around with it, and one of the knobs seemed like it turned the TV on when it was at a certain point. We thought that was weird so tried to reproduce the phenomenon and it worked. We tried to see if it would do anything else (turn it back off, change volune or channel, etc.) but no, it was just that if you had the TV off and set one knob to a certain point (slowly) it turned on the TV.
I assume it emitted a specific frequency that matched the “on” signal from the TV remote at a certain setting. Or maybe it just tripped something internal in the TV. We all thought it was really cool.
I’ll never forget that. I doubt there’s a random plasma globe in proximity but possibly some kind of device might have done it as a coincidence.
No, the scene you are thinking of is a movie called Grumpy Old Men.
(I’m using my phone and can’t copy the full link. Go to youtube and search “grumpy old men remote”)
My mother seemed to experience issues of this kind with the TV when she was still alive. Now she’s gone, i don’t seem to get them, so it was probably her fault.
I had a TV that came on in the afternoon when the sun was low in the sky and streaming through pretty small openings in the blinds. I think it was the reflection from other stuff in the room that did it. It was happening at roughly the same time in the afternoon on any sunny day for a week or so, and for at least two years.
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: There is nothing wrong with your television set.
Was there anyone else in the house at the time who was watching a different TV of the same brand? I’ve had cases when a remote in another room has triggered a TV of the same brand in a different room due to the IR signal reflecting oddly.
Otherwise I go with the cat theory.
OTOH, the timing is suspicious. Remember, in 1984 the visiscreens could not be turned off…
We have a large room here at the Home which is for communal TV watching. It has an alarming tendency to turn itself on. I’ve used the remote to turn it off, and within 30 seconds or less, it turns back on. Off. . .on. . .off. . .on. . .fuck it, do as you wish.
There is a scene like this in Poltergeist, which is probably what you’re thinking of.
Poltergeist, OK. Thanks. By the 1980s, I was already grown up, so Gen X kid stuff like that blurs together in my mind. I went through a second media childhood in the '90s and '00s due to having children and the TV being always set to Disney and Nick Kids. But I mostly skipped the '80s.
There is nobody else around with a TV remote unless it’s one of the neighbors, which made me think of the scene from Poltergeist. The only cat here is a plushie. The afternoon sun was behind clouds when the TV switched on. None of the explanations suggested so far can explain this. I’m serious, this really happened, it never happened before,* it defies explanation, and I’m trying really hard not to take the timing as suspicious. Just one of those coincidences. Right?
*ETA: I never use the TV; it belongs to someone else who just parked it here.
Umm…? 
That leaves us with my telescreen (I mistakenly called is a visiscreen earlier) conspiracy theory. All those Tesla charging stations? Transmitters to control all the local TV sets. Big Elon is watching you…
The TV just happened to turn on while Elon was bloviating.