James Washington

To SMART Tele, or not...

James Washington -

So you know it's Christmas, well closer to New year 2023, and the infernal tech life cycle has struck. My LG "smart" tele is on it's way out. Well, more the WiFi connectivity.

For a while now we've been having issues with connectivity and put it down to just Prime or Netflix being "down". However, in a recent discovery during a rather frustrating episode of being unable to watch our favourite shows, I noticed that our TV power cycles it's WiFi card - weird right?

Being inquisitive I decided to search for similar occurrences of my issue to see whether this was a common defect. We own a 55-inch LG 55UK6950PLB which has been superb over the last 3 years. It's got good image quality and generally has all the connectivity I need. I have a 4k Bluray/DVD player and a Virgin Tivo Box (which is very rarely used nowadays). Naturally, I don't really want to spend £500 on a new TV if I can get it repaired or find an alternative solution.

My search results turned up the usual "turn it off for 30 seconds", and "make sure you have good WiFi signal strength". Nothing cures this issue. I know we have a few 5G networks around so I've ensured that we're using a different channel so it can't be that (I have a business class router in my house, a Draytek). More notably, I also have a feeling that the WiFi module is also responsible for the remote's Bluetooth connectivity, as when the WiFi goes the remote mouse disappears and is unusable. Yes this model of TV has a Bluetooth remote that replicates the functionality of the controller for the Nintendo Wii - but only on the TV itself.

Not really finding any useful fixes for our predicament, I have the following options:

  1. Replace the entire TV - costing anywhere between £500-£1000.
  2. Wire the TV into the network, costing around £30.
  3. Or replace the WiFi card costing around £5.49 plus shipping.

So for the time being, mainly to keep the kids from driving us nuts, I've precariously wired in the TV directly into our home network and I've also purchased two new WiFi cards for the TV.

I'll post an update once I've fixed the problem.