I have one of those little 13 inch VCR combo TVs. It’s a Symphonic. Last night when I got home it was working just fine. I set the timer to automatically turn on in the morning to wake me up. Everything seemed to be okay with it.
This morning it never turned on (thankfully I set a backup alarm). When I turned it on to see if the timer was still set it turned off. I tried turning it on again. Ten seconds later it shut off. I’ve tried this about twenty times today, each time it automatically shuts off.
The only thing I can think of that might be making it do this is that it stormed yesterday during the day. When I got home all my clocks were blinking and the TV’s time had to be reset. But, like I said, it was working fine last night.
Anybody have any clue what’s wrong with it or how I can fix it?
I got it working for a bit. Once when I turned it on it ejected the tape and then stayed on. I put the tape back in and wasn’t having any problems at all until I started rewinding and fast forwarding through the things I’ve recorded. Everything was fine for a while and then the tape got stuck and shut the TV off again. Now I’m back to where I was before.
Also the channels I had programmed in have changed. Fox used to be 43 and WB 20. Now they’re channels 71 and 50 something. PBS disappeared. NBC, ABC and CBS are still the same though.
Usually to posts like this I post a link to the repair faq section that might be of help. Unfortunately, your device has 2 strikes against it:
It’s a TV/VCR combo. These are very hard to debug. Techs hate them. They are Bad Things to buy.
It’s a Symphonic. A really low quality brand.
I would leave it unplugged for a couple days and then try it. If you are still having problems, buy two replacement devices (TV and VCR) and a good quality brand.
I’m sorry to say that Symphonic is a terminally crappy brand. I used to do customer service for a company that sold something very close to, if not exactly the same as, the model you describe.
We took so many back as returns that we eventually quit carrying them. I remember doing a few return authorizations for this very same problem.
In fact, while watching a movie with my roommate at the time, I told her the same thing I wrote above. She told me that her’s had lasted for years with no problems. Of course, it spontaneously died a day or two later.
Mysteriously it’s working again. I’ve noticed that if I FF too far on to the tape it starts acting up again. It’ll get so far to the end of the tape and then stop even though there’s still about an hour left on it. Then the TV shuts off and starts being wierd again. When I try turning it back on to either eject or rewind the tape it starts shutting off again. I keep playing with it until it turns on and ejects the tape again.
Now does anyone know what happened with the channels?
When you say “the channels you programmed have changed” do you mean that you actually have to tune to channel 51 to get what used to be on 24, or that what you programmed as “FOX” now switches to channel 51, instead of channel 24? I’d erase whatever settings you had (if there’s a reset), turn it off, unplug it, then try reprogramming them.
Basically I deleted the channels that I didn’t get so I wouldn’t have to flip through 20 channels of static. Now when I put it on channel 43 that used to be FOX it’s static. Instead FOX is channel 94 I believe (still not used to it).