Ran into an issue with my m701d-a3 this morning. Have had it since December 2013, 7 years of trouble free TV watching. The cat woke my wife up at 4am… needed food. She went to the living room and noticed the entertainment system was off, yet the light by the remote sensor on the tv was on. She tried powering the system on to watch cable (xfinity/comcast X1 dvr), but it didn’t work.
She tried unplugging the TV and plugging it back in, still didn’t work. Then she came in and woke me up “THE TV IS BUSTED!”… good morning to you too. Just how I wanted to start a vacation day…
We have a A/V receiver that everything is ran through. The only cable to the TV is power and a HDMI cable from the Yamaha RX-V681 output port. It has a roku box (not the stick), PS3, Sony bluray player and a media PC ran into it. All using HDMI, the media pc uses Toslink for audio. We use a logitech One remote to control everything. All the original remotes are in a drawer in another room.
I looked online for stuff about the issue for a few hours, tried the tricks of unplugging, holding power button, etc, but it wouldn’t turn on. I had an USB light plugged into one of the USB ports as a test since I was behind the TV (which only have power when the TV is on), but it never turned on either. I couldn’t do anything like resetting the thing to factory or shutting off wifi because it would not turn on.
Defeated, I then spent a couple hours online looking for a new TV… Not knowing how to get rid of the old one and not wanting to go to 10 different stores in a 100 mile radius to look at TV’s amidst the pandemic, was pretty annoyed. Seems TV’s have changed a bit since 2013. Used to be able to get decent TV’s with local dimming arrays as a mid-grade TV, but seems those are now only higher end units that cost twice as much. So now I have to pay $2-3K for a 70” TV to get the features I bought in 2013 for $1600… nice… and I have to wait 4 weeks for it to be delivered… WHY DO I NOT KNOW ANYONE WITH A TRUCK ANYMORE?!?!?
So, in desperation, I decided to try and take the back off the TV. Not easy to do with a 70” TV when your alone and your wife is at work. Figured at the very least I could check the fuse on the PSU board and get the serial numbers off the boards. I also reseated all the molex type cables while leaving the CPU board’s ribbon cables alone, other than wiggling the ribbon cable connections for the power button. With it face down on my couch with the back off and cats trying to climb on it, I thought I’d check the voltages of the PSU per some videos I saw on youtube. Plug it in… the LED light I put in the USB port flickered… press the power button… it turns on and stays on. Huh. Try pressing the power button to shut it off, it wouldn’t shut off. Get the remote, press the power button and it shuts off. Using the remote, turn it back on and it comes on and stays on. I shut it off again and unplugged it, waited a bit, plugged it in (light flickered upon plug in), turned it on and it seemed to be working.
Put it all back together. Move it back across the room to the TV stand and plug it back in. Press the system “on” on my remote like normal to power everything up and I have TV again! Congratulated myself on accidental success… watched TV for a bit and shut it off, then went online to try and read more about it.
An hour or so later, I go to turn it back on and switch to Roku to watch a movie on my network via DLNA. I get about 3 folders deep, then the TV shuts itself off… I power it on and it lasts about 3 minutes and shuts off again… I power everything down and switch to the DVR/comcast box as the input instead (keep in mind, this is all handled via the receiver, not the TV, it’s always just using HDMI1). Seems fine, watch TV for 20 minutes, then switch to Roku. Try my movie again and it’s fine. TV was on for 8 hours straight, not a single blip. Half of it via comcast/cable and half via the Roku.
Regardless… I think it’s time to start researching a new TV. Not something I want to be forced into making a kneejerk purchase on since it’s something I have to live with for the hopefully the next decade…