Author: DOuG pRATt

This fellow produces excellent YouTube videos that I enjoy watching. So far, they’re mostly about servicing first generation CD players, from the Eighties.

This has been my year for consumer electronics troubles. The most recent problem was HDMI-CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) failing on my 13-year-old 40″ Samsung TV. Anynet+, as Samsung calls CEC, stopped working, even with the Samsung Blu-ray player. The setup screen said, “No Devices Found.”

Rather than manually telling the TV to power up and selecting an input, I was used to simply hitting a button on one of the connected HDMI devices to bring up power and go to its input. Not a huge First World inconvenience, but it bugged me that, after more than thirteen years, something went wrong. I wanted to see if I could get CEC working again.

First, I pulled the power from the TV. After plugging it back in, nope, still no devices found. Sometimes, it helps to leave a device powered off for more than a moment. So, I unplugged the TV again and, whatta ya know, the standby mode red LED remained lit. I watched and waited until the light faded out and was off. Did that do the trick? Yes, as seen in the photo.

The set is old enough to have compact fluorescent, rather than LED, backlights. As does the 15-year-old 32″ Samsung TV in my bedroom. I have no reason to consider replacing these sets, and based on this RTINGS report, it’s doubtful that new sets would be as reliable.