I feel like I have a tumultuous relationship with TVs and monitors. It took editing system files to get rid of some persistent black bars in 2018.
Then, in 2022, I had to jump through hoops to get volume buttons working on an Apple TV remote with my TCL Roku TV. I never got that TV to stop displaying a static screen randomly when Apple TV switched between HDR and SDR.
In the middle of 2024, I sold TCL TV and got an LG C3. I kept my setup, treating the TV as a dumb screen and letting Apple TV handle all the network stuff. However, the TV had a very interesting issue.
It would display black out the screen to display this, um, tutorial:
“Voice Recognition will be available by connecting TV to the network”
That’s not fun!
After spelunking on some forums, I found out what was happening. And I couldn’t believe the reason.
Brace up for the explanation:
- The TV ships with a voice assistant on by default. It’ll listen for “Hi LG”.
- If you don’t accept the voice TOS, there is no option to turn this off.
- Every time the TV hears “Hi LG”, it’ll try to activate the voice assistant.
- Without network connectivity, it’ll block whatever is on-screen to show the tutorial with no hint of why it activated.
- Of course, it’s not very accurate, and it was triggered by something sounding vaguely familiar on the speakers.
The solution?
- Accept voice agreement
- Turn the voice assistant off under AI settings
- Reject voice agreement again
Super intuitive, right?