Great "dumpster dive" - a Sony Bravia Smart TV - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2023, 11:30:48 am
content: I was driving past some junk at the side of the road when I thought I saw a big screen TV along with some old household junk. I did a U-turn and to my surprise the TV was a fairly new Sony Bravia Smart TV without even a scratch on it, so I took it home and powered it up. It was rebooting continuously. I googled the symtpom, to which the fix was "Hold two buttons in at the rear whilst plugging in the mains power cord to do a factory reset". Problem gone! Having a spare Sony remote, I then downloaded the latest firmware via WiFi. There was also an occasional backlight issue, and I found two dry joints in the backlight driver circuity. I resoldered them as well as a few other suspect joints. Problem gone! Total time spent on the TV was about one hour. I now have a great Sony Bravia Smart TV which as new that cost $1350 a few years ago. I got a high out of that experience.Why would someone throw out a TV without at least googling the symptoms? Why wouldn't the previous owners speak to a local electronics technician? I have a feeling we are in a throwaway society. But maybe as hard times are approaching, people will repair goods more.

author: sokoloff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2023, 11:43:23 am
content: I bet the TV had the backlight issue and they decided to live with it for a while, then it started boot-looping and they concluded “ok, that’s enough, let’s get a new one…”That doesn’t seem so outrageous to me, certainly less outrageous than people who get new cars every 3-4 years and that’s plenty common.TVs are cheap; buying a new one is faster and easier than chasing down a repair, drop off, pick up, etc.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2023, 03:52:55 pm
content: I picked up a TV (40" LCD, full HD) from eBay for £10 which the owner said constantly displayed "The function is unavailable" and changed channels randomly.Strangely enough, the symptom went away when the remote control was out of the room. I think it may be possible to guess what the actual fault was at this point - well, anyway, 5 minutes with a toothbrush and some IPA to clean off the carbon contacts on the remote controller was enough. Even if you didn't have the acumen to clean the controller, a second-hand one could be readily sourced on eBay or Amazon for about £15. People baffle me.I gave it to a family friend in the end as a Christmas present - an upgrade from her tiny 26" Panasonic LCD TV - which going on for 15 years old was still working okay but her eyesight was starting to make it a little difficult to watch. She was thrilled, and another TV was saved from the dumpster.

author: quadtech
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 22, 2023, 05:06:01 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on June 21, 2023, 11:30:48 amGreat find and fix!We are definitely in a throwaway society....1. People have too much money and too little time2. Controlled obsolescence has gotten into the public psyche - so even a 1 year gadget is "old"3. Products are not designed for repair4. The repair business is not lucrative enough in most urban areas

author: aqarwaen
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2023, 04:49:21 pm
content: tbh sony bravia tv are horrible.i used to own any android tv in 2017 or 2018.my main issue was that stupid naitive video playerdid display ALL VIDEOS INSTEAD SHOWING THEM WITH FOLDER.AND THERE WAS NOT OPTION TO TOGGLE HEI WANT SHOW ME FILES IN FOLDER INSTEAD DISPLAYING THEM IN MY FACE.and only way to fix it was install kodi player or some third filemanger.i have no idea why sony never fixed and THIS MAIN ISSUE WHY I RECOMMEND STAYING AWAY FROM SONY TV+LEAVE THEM DUMPSTER+END IN LANDFILLS!

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 02:04:50 am
content: If you want a badly designed TV, try LG. I bought one of these TV's about two years ago, hoping they had decent designers in the Korean company. It has a great screen, but the remote control response and the bloatware is deplorable.Turn the TV on to watch a channel, and the remote wont respond until about one or two minutes after the TV picture appears. Hence I cannot change the channel quickly. And if I do try the remote before that extra one minute, anything can happen like it goes into a different mode. LG seems to be the low end of the market. Alwasy has been since it was called Lucky Goldstar with their crappy video tape players. It is as if Microsoft supplied its crappy Windows operating system to LG where even today the system is not ready after logon (it is better with Windows 11, but Linux has never had a problem.The bloatware is shockingly user unfriendly on the LG TV. Full of crap. They provide updates periodically, but it is no better. It's pointer using the remote is dodgy too.I have a 5 year-old Bravia (as well as the dumpster one) and have never had a problem. A really good TV.Oddly enough I rarely ever watch TV, even though we have six in this house (To coin a line from Back To The Future 1: "Gee, they must be rich!") Two old ones are going out in the dumpster after I remove any high voltage capacitors.

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 03:59:34 am
content: Sony TVS suffer from dying eMMCs, and there's very little info or flash dumps available, plus they use heavy security so they won't boot if anything strange is found.Finally they store the keys in the rpmb partition which nobody can access.Happened to me 2 years ago, it started with those random bootloops and serious slowdowns.Started reading possible issues, found that, bought a new chip and copied the flash contents.The flash was partially damaged, also eMMC health was 0%, I was able to only extract 75% of the system partition, but it worked anyways.Lost the keys in the rpmb so no more Netflix/Chromecast, bought a Chromecast with Google TV and that was it.It's absolutely stupid that a $900 TV dies after 5 years because of the flash wearing out.Now I only use it like a dumb TV, no updates, no Internet, like it should be, let the Chromecast take the hard job, if it dies just replace it, $50 and done!

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 09:28:24 am
content: Quote from: DavidAlfa on July 04, 2023, 03:59:34 ameMMC failure is also common on early Tesla Model S touchscreens and in phones and other consumer electronics.The problem is embedded software engineers seem to forget they're not working on a hard disk and the eMMC has a limited write lifespan.Some eMMC controllers are worse than others and don't use good methods to reallocate blocks, far better if you are write intensive to use something like MTD on top of a raw flash device and let the kernel manage it, but that is more effort.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 10:20:19 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on July 04, 2023, 02:04:50 amThe gold standard for TV UI about ten years ago (dunno about right now) was Panasonic. Don't know if they all are just trying to aim for store attention grabbing now though.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 12:22:17 pm
content: Quote from: DavidAlfa on July 04, 2023, 03:59:34 amA dumb TV is not so bad. At least it starts up quickly. The LG TV is slower starting up than an old black and white valve set warming up in the 1960'sSony engineers should have had more sense, but I suspect they used whatever was cheapest parts. Lest face it, you sell a million TV's and save $1 on parts, you've just saved $1 million dollars.If consumers have a bad experience, they won't buy the brand again. IBM learnt that lesson with their Deskstar hard disks (nicknamed Death Star) in the early 2000's. 100% failure rate within two years. They were so unreliable and IBM treated their non-US customers so poorly, no-one would touch their crappy hard disks again. IBM had destroyed its reputation. IBM sold the hard disk business to Hitachi, but consumers avoided Hitachi hard disks after that in case they had were infected with the Deathstar quality. Seagate were the most reliable at the time.I learnt this over the years...Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 12:57:53 pm
content: It's still an Android TV, I simply use it to show the Chromecast.HDMI CEC makes it really simple, the Chromecast will turn the TV on and off, and the small remote is pretty nice.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 01:17:17 pm
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on July 04, 2023, 10:20:19 amI'm not a massive fan of smart TVs but our old Panasonic smart TV (11 years old, plasma, still going strong) shows live TV within 3 seconds of being powered on. It then proceeds to 'boot up' all of the smart TV stuff in the background. Contrasted to a generic smart TV dumpster find, it takes over 30 seconds from cold power up before it is ready, though if it is in standby then powered up it "only" takes 10 seconds.

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 01:37:05 pm
content: SmartTVs are slow on booting only when removing power, otherwise it's ~2sec.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 01:48:56 pm
content: They should make a smart TV that's just a monitor with a place to install a Raspberry Pi or even a mini ITX board on the back.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 01:53:46 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on July 04, 2023, 01:48:56 pmAhem.https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/tv-thats-not-necs-pi-powered-55-display

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 10:56:30 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on July 04, 2023, 01:48:56 pmYes, then that would be just a monitor.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 12:07:18 am
content: QuoteWhilst the ui is great wots not so great is many of the "smart" features no longer work because the hardware aint up to the job any more.As for the ui on there more recent blueray players,thats a right ballache to use.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 04:37:28 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on July 04, 2023, 10:56:30 pmExcept it would be nicely integrated so that there won't be a separate menu for the monitor controls and there also wouldn't be a mess of cables in the back.

author: Bryn
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 08:07:14 am
content: This reminds me of a certain scene in a Scottish comedy called Still Game, where one of the characters fished out a TV from a skip as part of an insurance fraud schemeBack on topic though, I've seen relatively new TVs, whether "smart" or just regular, thrown out in the street and still in pristine condition. Maybe the owners of them are as clueless as the ones mentioned in the OP

author: Messtechniker
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 10:09:09 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on July 04, 2023, 02:04:50 amMOSFETs might also be of interest.I also like to salvage heatsinks. Often low-profile types

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 11:18:24 pm
content: Quote from: Messtechniker on July 05, 2023, 10:09:09 amGood point. Heatsinks are not that cheap. I rarely use them, but when I do I don't like spending $$$ on something I threw out. Maybe some MOSFETS but these days the RDSon is so low in both N-channel and P-channel MOSFETS, old MOSFETS are often redundant. High voltage ones are worth salvaging though. This weekend I'll rat a few because the annual hard waste collection happens in ten days.