Repairing an LG OLED TV and alternative courses of action
My parents are about to get a new TV because theirs is faulty and they don't seem interested in repairing it. I'm going to be taking the faulty one from them and, because it's ridiculous that the TV only worked normally for 3.5 years, am very tempted to try a repair. It's an LG CX OLED from 2021, here's a description of the issue:
- When plugged into the mains, the standby light will come on and the TV can be powered on and used as normal. However, if too much time elapses after plugging-in without fully powering on (I don't actually know how long, somewhere between 5-10 minutes), the standby light will switch off and the TV will become unresponsive.
- When the TV is in this "unresponsive" state, the only thing that will bring it back to life is to unplug it from the mains and wait a bit (again, somewhere between 5-10 minutes), then plug it back in and turn it on. This happens every time the TV is plugged in, with no variation.
- The TV is fully functional when it's turned on, and there's no other issues with it at all.
- If the TV is turned back off (back to standby mode), the clock starts again until it becomes unresponsive.
So clearly there's some problem with standby mode. Some searching has indicated that other customers are frequently having this issue, and that replacing either the PSU or Motherboard of the TV will solve the issue. It's out of warranty, so I'm going to be spending money if I want to fix it. Replacement PSUs are about $250, and replacement Motherboards are about $350. I can only really afford one of these parts right now, so it's a gamble if I can't figure out a way to isolate the issue to one of the boards. I don't own a multimeter to test power, nor do I know anything about electronics, so I'm slightly fumbling around in the dark on this one.
There's always the alternative of getting up and switching the power on and off every time, which is significantly more convenient for me than it is for my parents because of room size and outlet placement, but I'd like to be able to use the remote as intended (and, as I mentioned before, it's ridiculous that the thing is falling apart after only a few years, it's a very expensive TV!). I could also... find an IR controlled outlet or something? I don't know if that's a thing, but you know what I mean.
I will end up using this TV regardless of whether or not I can get it fixed, because OLED is unbeatable, and it's not every day that my parents will replace something that isn't outright destroyed, but if you have electronics experience, or have had this problem (it seems like it's super common) any recommendations or help would be appreciated!
No experience with these TVs but the general issue smacks 'bad capacitor'.
When you open it up if the motherboard or PSU has a bulging electrolytic capacitor it's a good sign that's the unit to replace. I'd be surprised to see this kind of failure in anything of this age and my gut says power supply generally for these symptoms. Curious what the solution ends up!
I agree to check for a bad capacitor in your case. It's a common failure point and a fast, easy, cheap fix for especially TVs and monitors.
So, I finally got around to opening the thing up, and... I really can't see anything that looks out of the ordinary. I don't have a trained eye, so I'm dropping some images here:
Full PSU, Closeup 1,2
Mobo 1,2,3
No burns, nothing I would consider 'bulging' and no bad connections, I'm stumped! My obvious next step is to try getting LG to fix it, but if anyone can see anything I'm missing please let me know!
(paging @kai_re since you replied and might have some insight)
moderately related, which DNS are you using? catbox.moe doesn't load for me at all using Google and Quad9.
Cloudflare, 1.1.1.1
According to the FAQ, catbox was somehow involved in the Christchurch shooting (presumably by hosting something from the shooter), so it may be scrubbed from a lot of DNSs. Never had an issue with it and it's the only site I know of that does direct linking to images, so I still use it.
EDIT: it's not loading for me anymore... it may be down.
hm. interesting. https://imgbb.com/ lets you link directly, but the process of getting the URL is ugly. :)
And the results are in... anyone who guessed the PSU was correct! LG technician came and swapped it out today, free of charge (go consumer protections!), it works like normal now.
Thanks for the update, enjoy the amazing picture quality OLED provides!
yay! congrats on the free repair, too. that's awesome.
so yeah, just donate that prize money to a good charity for horses...
Before you start trying to crack this thing open, I'm just going to ask the obvious here. Have you tried doing a full factory reset on this TV? This sounds like it could be a software issue that hits when the software puts the TV into "deep sleep".
Definitely the correct first step!
I wouldn’t know about the motherboard/psu, but maybe you could use a smart plug to remotely power up the tv when you want to turn it on? I bought an eve energy for 50euros and it works great.
Yeah, that was my parents' solution to the problem. I hate wifi-triggered appliances and usually don't carry my phone around at home, but It's a solution I will use if I don't wind up trying a repair.
Why not attach it to a plug with a dead simple old fashioned analogue switch? I use these everywhere for things like USB chargers: they are switched off when not in use, and I don't have to unplug them physically.
I live in Australia, where switches are built-in to most outlets, so it's already something I can do. It might be silly but I just want the remote to work so I can turn the TV on from the couch without having to think in advance.
I'd consider building Arduino/ESP/RPi Pico thingie with infrared port and relay that will react on your "Power on" signal from TV remote and switch the relay on. You could even use some normally (almost) never used button in the remote to avoid confusion what it should be doing right now (so you don't have to think abouthow to logically attack the code).
That way you take your remote, push the secret button, it will turn power for the TV on, then "Power" button on remote and after you switch the TV off, you turn of the power with secret key.
To conserve on code and need to think, I would simplify even more - if you push the secret button, the Arduino power cycles the relay thus basically resetting power to TV (add some delay to allow TV to fully power off, say 5-10 seconds - trial and error will tell you the time it needs). That way you just press secret button and TV becmes responsive no.metter the previous state.
sounds fair :)
FWIW, if you have the infrastructure for a smart outlet, you can almost certainly link a wireless smart switch to it. Ikea's RODRET (n.b. US store link) is cheap and effective, and can be linked directly to a Homeassistant instance with Zigbee without needing any other Ikea infrastructure.
(It also runs on a AAA battery, which is a breath of fresh air compared to my various devices which take coin cells, none of which take the same battery size. Looking at you, Philips.)
Aussie consumer law has pretty solid protections around quality and fitness for purpose, regardless of what the warranty says, so if you're up for a bit of back and forth convincing LG to respect that, you can probably get them to fix it for you: https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-services/consumer-rights-and-guarantees
The fact there are a ton of people having similar problems should help you a lot in making clear it's a manufacturing issue (i.e. LG's problem in the eyes of the law, not yours), and politely quoting the relevant regulations is usually enough to get things sorted as long as you're persistent enough to get it escalated to the right people. There's also precedent suggesting an 8 year expected lifespan for a TV.
Vaguely related reply to your vaguely related tangent: Samsung does some OLEDs that have the electronics box separate from the actual panel, and they're amazing for wall mounting. I'm guessing the very high bandwidth cable and connector to do that must add some decent cost, though, because the vast majority of OLEDs on the market still seem to have everything strapped to the back of the panel - which is the worst of both worlds, as you're seeing!
It seems like a lot of LG's "smart" products have software issues. And the thing that bugs me is the memory that they bought WebOS, an open-source operating system that was well appreciated within the niche of people who were using it, and then closed it up and made it into a joke. A couple of years ago the husband and I were researching OLED TVs and were about to buy an LG model (C7 or something like that, I think?) because it was extremely well regarded as the best value in OLEDs, but in the end we decided to go with the Sony model because it had the same LG panel but with Sony's software and video processing hardware. It ended up costing more, but I think it was well worth it because for the most part it just works and I have never really had a problem from it. Excepting of course, issues with the things I've plugged into it (HDMI CEC is a joke).
I'm not much of an electronics tinkerer, but we do have an old LG (older than yours by a few years). It have some settings for power saving-- you can choose to leave it on standby or power off completely whenever you use the ON/OFF button. Just wondering if playing around with those settings might let you sidestep the problem.
PSU! there are a lot of threads about this same issue. you could try pressing LG on it, asking why they didn’t do a recall, turning up the charm, etc.
here’s one post