Discussions

[ChiroVette]

Okay, I am at my wits end now! Some of this is a series of new problems, but some are old. They are all related, to one another, and have to do with turning one another on/off. Not just remotes, but hard TV buttons.

Now a few facts. I have two Roku TV's side by side in my bedroom. I am using a Sharp 43" Roku LC-43LBU591U on my computer desk as a PC and gaming monitor. Adjacent to it, literally 6 inches to the left, sits my 55" TCL, Model # 55-S525.

Okay, so the problem used to be much simpler. Sometimes, when I turned off the 43" Sharp, that would turn on the 55" TLC. Not the other way around. So if I turned off the TCL, it didn't effect the Sharp. But here's the odd part of that: not only did using the remote to turn off the Sharp turn on the TCL, but even the hard button on the TV. So if I turn the Sharp off from the little bottom button, it would then turn on the TCL. As I said, this was no big deal, as I would simply turn the TCL off when it happened, which wasn't always, just sometimes.

Now, however, things have gotten completely out of hand. I have a Fire Stick 4K, newest model, on the TCL, as I use it for streaming in the bedroom. I sync'd the Fire Stick remote to the TCL, not to the Sharp. But whenever I hit the home button on the Fire Stick remote, it goes to the Fire Stick home screen on the TCL, but immediately turns on the Sharp, and goes to the home screen on that! This is absolutely insane and annoying.

But wait, it gets worse! I also have a 75" Bravia 4K TV in the living room, adjacent to my current bedroom. I have Alexa and the Logitech Harmony Elite Remote, and I also have a Fire Stick in the living room. Now, whenever I hit the home button on the Harmony Elite, which has NOTHING to do with either Roku TV, it immediately turns on BOTH of my Roku TV's in the bedroom. This is an intolerable situation as every time I want to go to the living room Fire Stick home screen (which is often when streaming in the living room), I have to walk into the bedroom and manually turn off both Roku TV's. I suppose I can un-plug both Roku TV's from A/C power whenever I am streaming on my Fire Stick in the living room on the Sony TV, but that is a terribly inconvenient solution, right?

Look, I don't care about the 43" Sharp. The TV is old and I will be replacing it soon. Perhaps I should care less about the TCL as well? The reason I say this is because I am literally ready to toss both these Roku TV's in the garbage and replace them with models by Sony, Samsung, LG, or whatever. But this is not an acceptable situation.

Oh, one more thing! I only use the actual Roku remote for the 43" not the TCL. The TCL I control with my cable remote (Optimum is my provider). And even though I sync'd that remote only to the TCL, it still turns the Sharp On/Off. Obviously this isn't going to work for me, and if replacing these TVs with better units from more well established TV manufacturers is the only solution, I am willing to do it. Any help would be appreciated, before I throw these two aging sets in the trash-heap and simply replace them with non-Roku sets, which have never caused problems.

Thanks in advance for the help!

[ChiroVette]

Update:

Okay, this situation is getting stupider by the minute. I decided to try what I hoped would be a partial fix. As a reminder, the TV's are side by side. Anyway I went into the settings on the 43" set, and I did the following:

-Disabled the WiFi by going into Settings and resetting the Network Connection.

-I double checked to make sure that the TV isn't connected to my network, and assumed it isn't because none are listed. When I click on "About" in the Network Tab, it says "Your TV is not connected to the Internet. Please go to 'set up connection'.

-Then I went into Settings > Remotes & Devices and disabled all remotes.

-I double checked this, so now when I go into "Remotes & Devices" none are listed, and there is now a tab to the right saying "Set up a new device"

-Then I went into Advanced System Settings and into the Device Connect tab and clicked on Disable 'device connect'. I also double-checked now and 'Disable Device connect' is checked.

-Then, also in Advanced System Settings, I disabled "Control Mobile Apps" although, I think that may have been redundant since I did that BEFORE I disabled the WiFi, and now it says "Network Access (Disabled) in that tab.

The long and short of it is NOTHING has changed. And this is perplexing. Because even though the 43" TV is no longer connected to my network or the Internet, even though all devices are disabled, the TVs still keep turning one another on and off. This isn't just true of the remotes, but also the physical on/off TV buttons. Additionally, and this is the truly insane part, the 43" TV still turns on when I hit the "Home button" on my Firestick remote! Not only that, but it does so from the NEXT ROOM. How is this even possible when there is a wall between rooms and no direct line of sight for IR to work?

Oh, and as an added bonus, when I have Alexa turn on my living room home theater system and the living room Fire Stick, it still turns on both TV's. Seriously how is that even possible? The TCL I understand. Well, not really, but it is still connected to my network. But how in the **bleep** is the 43" set still being turned on and off from another room? When I press "Home" on my Logitech Harmony Elite, in the Fire TV device, it still turns on both TV's. Additionally, say I am working on my PC using the 43" as a monitor. If I hit the home button on the Fire Stick Remote (sometimes I stream on the TCL and use the Sharp for PC work simultaneously) it takes the 43" out of the "Computer" HDMI input and sends it to the home screen.

This is a seriously absurd situation, and I am wondering if there was some recent update that crashed all this stuff on me? Either way, this is intolerable. If I can't solve this problem, both these TVs are going to have to be replaced, like immediately. lol

I am going to try two more things. First I will reset the 43" to factory default settings and not connect any remote/Wifi devices to it and I won't set up a network connection. I really don't need network or internet on this TV. I just need it to be a **bleep** TV/monitor, nothing more.

Not sure what the **bleep** I am going to do with the 55" TCL, if I'm honest. I was planning on replacing the 43" TV anyway, so the fix for that is to just buy the Sony I'm looking at and be done with it. But replacing a relatively new 55" TCL, which is a much higher quality set than the Sharp, seems like a little but of a waste.

***It should be noted that all of the MAJOR problems I am experiencing seem to have started when I started using the Roku app on my iPhone. This is why I was hoping that disabling control by mobile apps would solve it. I can live with the original problem, if I am honest. It was more of an inconvenience. The original problem is that turning the 43" TV off would sometimes turn ON the TCL next to it. But this was intermittent and I could just easily turn off the adjacent set.

[ChiroVette]

Update #2:

Okay, I solved half my problems by resetting the Sharp 43" to factory default, and I exited out of all the options set up a network connection as well as those to add devices and remotes. So now the only remote that works with the Sharp is the IR remote that came with the unit originally. Turning it on and off, either manually from the TV or with the one remote now has stopped turning the TCL on/off. Also, thankfully, that set is no longer responding to the Harmony Elite, Alexa, or any other remote, including the Fire Stick remotes. 

Unfortunately, that is the set I need to replace lol and the 55" TCL is still continuing to turn itself on or off. I am going to try a few settings with the TCL, to see if I can fix this nonsense. I simply cannot have the TV keep turning itself on and off every time I turn on my Fire Stick "Activity" on the Harmony Elite, not to mention every time I hit the **bleep** home button on the Elite in the other room.

I suppose I can unplug the TCL from A/C power when in the living room, then plugging it back in when I am in the bedroom if nothing else works, but that seems like a really stupid solution to me.

Oh, one more little piece of this absurd puzzle I forgot to mention in my last post (before resetting the 43") is I wanted to rule out this being a problem with the Fire Stick. So I unplugged the bedroom Fire Stick from A/C power, in case somehow the Fire Stick OS was mucking up the works. That changed nothing. The TV's were still turning one another on/off  from the living room with one or both fire sticks removed from A/C power, and the Harmony Elite was still turning them on and kicking both TV's to the home screen from the other room with every single press of the home button.