They must have put a timer in it.
My first expensive mouse with rgb, lasers and shit from Corsair stopped scrolling a week after warranty ended.
Somewhere an engineer must be proud to design a circuit that blew exactly three years to the day of manufacture.
Just coincidentally coinciding with the expiration of the 3-year warranty…
Comments blaming cheap manufacturer are clueless, as if any alleged top company nowadays builds a better tv model or a good product.
Lots of Samsung high end TVs frequently dies after two to three years, it becomes a norm to see Samsung tv dies so early due to bad hardware / panels, actually i would argue that the whole collapse of durability in tv markets is due to Samsung policies specifically going all in with its volume war in the global markets, flooding it products with marketing first strategy - pre 2022, then eventually losing the panels war to Chinese manufacturers, this among other things (like singularity of sourcing) reduced the life expectancy of TV hardware, forcing us to deal with garbage software features, clear as fat spywares and adware in exchange of garbage panels while still flooding the market with low tier hardware that get marketed as top tier because it has Samsung/LG name on it, so TVs that used to have 15 years of life expectancy, now is only two to four years at max.
I had Three premium Sony tvs -the 9 series- dead after three years, search online for Sony four red blinks of death and see thousands of people complaining.
Keep in mind sony “supposedly” is a top tier hardware manufacturer.Just because your Samsung / Sony / LG tv didn’t die after a couple of years that “ doesn’t mean it had a good quality assurance policy or durable hardware, it actually means you were lucky with your tv hardware/ panel lottery.
TCL / Hisense or whatever cheap Chinese models you get is more or less the same but less expensive and more fragile.
note: a good tv should have surge protection capabilities, better IC controller and LED lifetime support. (none of that exists in the tv market anymore)
Samsung in particular is expert at planned obsolescence. I will never stop telling the story about how my Samsung washer destroyed itself because they deliberately designed a critical structural part – the “spider arm,” which spins the drum – to also be the sacrificial anode!!!
another fucked up fact about Samsung,
You might already know that they are the number one global company in RAM production (50 percent of global market share).
But samsung is actually behind the huge influx in RAM prices worldwide, coordinating and lobbying for a shift of production from DDR3/4 to HBM (high bandwidth memory) causing a 700% increase of RAM prices, so that no one can affords home computing anymore and LLM becomes the normal narrative of computing.
Dang, a 3 year lifespan is terrible for a TV
Typical for the cheap TVs you can buy on Amazon. They have nice panels and a bunch of really nice features. But they’re packed with spyware and adware, and they only last about 3 or 4 years.
Then, suddenly, the screen goes black forever. And you need to buy a new one.
I currently have a 43 inch TLC and it has some great features that I got for $200. I think I might have about a year left on it. But I knew that going into this, because I had, previously, a 43 inch from Vizio that died on nearly exactly the three-year anniversary of the day I received it from Amazon and first plugged it in.
So I definitely believe there’s some kind of timer inside of them that just causes them to blink out
This is also ASUS’s business model with every product category. Great specs at an attractive price, but it always breaks down faster than any other brand.
Often times it’s the power supply, they use really cheap capacitors in it, and if you open the power supply, discharge the capacitors and replace them with higher grade ones, then it’ll fix them.
My friend does that for extra cash on the side, he’ll pick up TVs that have been thrown away and have them up and running in a day.
Ten dollars worth of replacement capacitors, he ends up making between sixty and two hundred dollars off of each TV.
I have a 65” TCL I bought in 2018, and a couple years ago, the backlight went out. I bought some new LED strips for it, opened it up (not easy at all), and replaced them. It’s been going strong since. :)
So yeah, they don’t last long, but if you’re willing, you can fix them.
I have two TVs my brother repaired out of our work ewaste, same thing he just swapped some capacitors and replaced the led backlights. I put one up in the bedroom and one in the backyard. If you lower the brightness a bit from max they las a lot longer apparently
Wait, how hard is that? I always figured TVs were one of the least fixable electronics
It is not easy, and requires one piece of special equipment. You have to buy suction cups to lift the glass and screen up, as well as the replacement LED strips and diffuser lens things. My dad and I fixed it together using a queen size bed as a work space. We had barely enough room for everything. There are a lot of steps, because you basically have to take apart the entire TV to get to the backlight (the one part that is guaranteed to fail and need replacing). We watched or read (I can’t remember) a tutorial on how to do it that was for an almost identical model. Overall, it took us about two hours to complete. But, that TV is still going strong. I’m currently watching it now. :)
Hmmm
I’ll keep that in mind
Maybe the solution is to stop buying tech on Amazon. I have a Samsung TV that I got at Costco for like $120 in 2020 and it’s still going strong.
Also, don’t buy on Black Friday. That’s when they unload the really garbage-tier shit.
It doesn’t matter where I bought it, it’s the company that made it. If I got the same TV at Best Buy or wherever else, it would still have the same problems.
And not everyone has a Costco membership.
I would gladly buy a better TV if I could afford it. But I can’t.
I’m totally with you - it’s really hard to know what’s inside.
I have read that sometimes you can differentiate which seller a product was built for by the SKU, but I don’t think that’s always true. And again, even if you can find the info it doesn’t always tell us all that much.
By and large its all the same shite. You dig into these and find out the same stuff is going around wrapped in different plastic casings marketed as whatever. My samsung bought at costco is also a TLC, and also a hisense.
Why would you buy a product that you know is going to die so quickly? The waste and environmental impact would keep me awake at night…
I just sold a Samsung TV that I’d had for fifteen years and was still going strong.
Because you’re poor?
If I could afford a better TV, I would buy a better TV
Maybe buying a second hand telly is an option? Like a proper brand quality model one. People upgrade their functioning home entertainment systems to buy bigger and shinier all the time.
And maybe not an option.
Why does the TV I buy matter so much to you?
It was a suggestion to try improve your life and not have to buy a shitty telly that you know will break every three years, but you’re welcome to do whatever you want. Sorry for trying to be helpful dude.
I didn’t really feel like much of a suggestion, more “let them eat cake”.
As I’ve tried to make clear already, it’s not about doing whatever I want. It’s about what I can afford.
Just because you have the privilege to afford a better product doesn’t mean everyone else does.
Warranty is usually from date of purchase. If it had a 2 year warranty and you used a credit card to purchase it, the credit card will often have 1 year extended warranty on top of the manufacturer’s warranty. Something to look into.
Just want to second the “try fixing it” people. It’s broken, anyway, right?
I already ripped the back off and ordered a used board off of eBay from someone with a broken screen. The caps all looked good so idk what the problem is. The light on the tv just blinks 17 times and then starts over again. The board is a combo power supply and logic.
Honestly, I’m dealing with the same thing myself at the moment, and parts are out of stock everywhere except eBay, so I’m in “replace board bits” town.
17 is wild, but do you have the model number? I may be able to get the code sheet for it.
Did you try cleaning off those cobwebs? It might help.
Interesting. I have almost the same model, except made in 2024. I set myself a calendar reminder to see if the same thing will happen to it next year. This seems like it should be class-action lawsuit, honestly.
Lifetime usually depends on the lifetime of the capacitors used. PC motherboards used to boast about having high temperature tolerant japanese capacitors and my experience is that those lasted much longer than the once that didn’t have those.
So technically it has timer.
Cap kits and a soldering iron are cheap and easy.
The skill to use them, though, isn’t so easy… Especially on delicate, tightly-packed modern circuit boards.
Worth a try, perhaps, if the thing is already broken anyway … but it would be very easy for a novice solderer to accidentally damage other components and permanently kill the board.
I remember as a kid the shop guarantee on products was six months. I had bought my first joystick for the C64 with my pocket money, and six months and one day later it broke.
I’d instead search for a good TV… Second hand. I think i bought my Sony 55" TV in mint condition about 2019 or 2020, and it still works just as good as (not its) first year. Never connected it online and i don’t watch live TV. Just permanently hooked to a PC, and on during most of the day.
I found a used main board on eBay so we shall see if that fixes it. If it does I might get rid of it anyway.
My current LG is so old, it doesn’t support the video formats used by a lot of things today. It still works fine when things are transcoded to formats it understands.
Chinese address but made in Mexico?
We exploit China for their cheap parts and Mexico for their cheap labor.
And NAFTA bonus
😭
My 65" LG OLED from 2019 going strong. If you look closely though, the colors look weird around the rim, and the remote scroll wheel is fragile and bad. I got a replacement remote which is a piece of shit despite being almost exactly like the original. I have to press like 5 times in order for it to register, if the remote has been idle for too long (like a minute).
Also it’s LG so… 🫢🙊🔕
“Lifetime manufacturer warranty.”
The lifetime of the TV is three years.
Don’t buy Hisense, y’all. Best dumb tubes are Sony & LG.
Don’t buy Hisense, y’all. Best dumb tubes are Sony & LG.
FFS, don’t buy LG!
Strong evidence of spyware in that they record the room’s audio and send it to their servers.
Strong evidence of spyware in that they record the room’s audio and send it to their servers.
That’s why people are blindly downvoting me. My comment was about build quality.
Rereading:
Best dumb tubes are Sony & LG.
Don’t buy any smart TV, from anyone. Get a dumb screen, buy used if you have to. Go online and find instructions for disabling/destroying the mic and camera if you already have one.
LG is the worst its literally garbage, Sony tv is owned by TCL.
