Q: Last night, as I waited for the sweet sound of construction to whisk me to sleep, my living room TV turned on by itself in the next room. After checking under beds and in closets, I've determined it wasn't a bored intruder with an itch to watch Conan O'Brien. So what gives? Why did my TV turn on by itself?
A: Short answer: We don't really know.
But we did ask around inside the most reliable resource we know. Yep, that's right; we've carefully mined the endless riches of crowd-sourced question forums like Yahoo! Answers and Answers.com for a stockpile of possibilities.
Sure, these sites are full of uninformed advice and laugh-worthy trolling. But when the best answer you can come up with is "Ghosts," any advice is worth a look.
What Gives?
Here are just a few of the (more realistic) possibilities that your fellow anonymous internet contributors have suggested:
- You or someone else has accidentally set a "wake-up" timer for your TV.
- Your remote batteries are low. Remotes are known to send off some weird signals when they're on the last bit of juice. Your TV could be interpreting infrared noise from your remote as an "On" command.
- The power button on the remote or the TV itself could be stuck.
- Somebody could be playing a prank on you.
- Your neighbors could be accidentally powering on your TV through the window, especially if they have the same model synced up with a similar universal remote (like the one your cable company gives you).
- Your pet might have just sat or stepped on your remote control while you were in the other room.
- Perhaps it wasn't powered off entirely before (maybe you shut off the cable box but not the TV screen?), and it's now flickering back on from a power surge.
- A fluorescent lamp inside the same room as the TV is blinking red and causing a sensitive infrared remote sensor to turn the set on and off.
- It could just be an internal electrical malfunction, like a resistor that's changed value or a defective infrared sensor.
Troubleshooting
It sounds like this happened to you only once, so we're going to lean towards the cause being a neighbor or pet accidentally sending signals to your TV to turn on.
But if it happens again, get started on some trial-and-error troubleshooting by pulling the batteries from the remote or placing thick tape over the remote sensor on the TV.
Oh, we do know one thing: If it happens at the same time every day, you definitely have a "wake-up" timer set. That, or it's ghosts. For sure.
Got a good question you'd like answered? Send your queries and we'll see if the Unplggd team or our readers can help answer it.
(Images: Flickr member Stuart Pardue licensed for use under Creative Commons, Flickr member zeni893 licensed for use under Creative Commons)
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I had a TV/cable box that would turn on to channel 13 by itself. Eeeeek.
^ Definitely ghosts! Eeeeek is right!
A friend of mine had a TV that would randomly turn on several times a day. Never at any set interval.
You probably have a neighbor with a remote control on the same frequency. I believe most remotes are line of sight. Did you have your curtains or shades closed? The other possibility is a mischievous neighbor with a TV-B-Gone ( www.tvbgone.com ). I used to have all sorts of fun with one of these walking past sports bars windows during the super bowl and in my favorite Mexican restaurant during the World Cup. ;-)
Ghosts. (It actually probably is the remote thing. I used to work in a test environment where we all had not just the same TV remotes but also the same video game console remotes, and we were forever accidentally screwing with one another's screens. Good luck!)
Wait, there was a post recently on this either on Kitchen or AT. Someone's oven was turning itself on! But commenters actually spoke of other items, including TVs.
For the poster, I think it was her proximity to a radio tower or something like that. They installed something in her cabintry around the wall oven to prevent it from happening again.
Unrelated but... my german shepherd used to stand a face an empty corner growling and barking. After about a year he stopped, my hubby said, "the ghost must be gone". My reply was "Nope, furbaby just got used to him/her, no longer a stranger".
If you ever have problems with it ACCEPTING remote signals (rather than picking up random ones), it's probably your CFLs. They emit infra red signals which TVs interpret as a signal. Although I've never heard of them turning stuff on ;P
the sweet sound of construction
Was it road construction? This happened to us in the wee hours last night. While we were asleep, TV suddenly started blaring at an incredible volume, woke us up, we ran into the living room and tried to turn it down, but like a machine possessed, it changed channels and increased volume no matter what we did. The batteries in our remote are ok, but, we do have a major road construction project within 100 yards. They are only working at night to avoid traffic problems. We think they are using an infrared traffic control signal that just happened to hit our TV's infrared receptor. There are a lot of patents for infrared signals controlling one-lane traffic in construction areas. Unfortunately, only solutions are unplugging the TV or blocking its infrared (remote control) receptor.