HOT 197: Stop Your TV from Turning On by Itself - How to Fix Automatic Power-Ons with HDMI-CEC

Hands-On Tech (Audio)

Leo Laporte

Reviews, Technology, Product Reviews, Tech, Gadgets, Twit

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mikah addresses a listener question about why their TCL TV and cable box sometimes turn on automatically after a power outage. He explains the likely causes and offers troubleshooting tips. Mikah also shares an important follow-up from a previous episode about internet speeds and the limitations of the Apple TV 4K's Ethernet port.

Main Topic:
• Richard asks why his TCL TV and cable box sometimes turn on by themselves after brief power outages
• Mikah explains that TCL TVs have a "Fast TV Start" feature that keeps the TV in a powered-on state to maintain network connections, causing it to turn back on when power is restored
• HDMI-CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) allows devices to communicate and control each other, which may cause the cable box to turn on when the TV powers on
• Mikah advises checking the TV and cable box settings for features like Fast TV Start, sleep/hibernation modes, and HDMI-CEC to adjust the behavior
• Many smart home devices, such as lights and robot vacuums, also have auto-on features that should be configured to prevent unexpected behavior after power outages

Follow-up:
• Thomas points out that in a previous episode (195), the Apple TV 4K used to test internet speeds has a maximum throughput of about 990 Mbps due to its Gigabit Ethernet port
• For the listener (Ross) to accurately test their 2.5 Gbps internet speed, they should ensure their Mac supports the full 2.5 Gbps that the adapter provides
• The Apple TV 4K's Wi-Fi 6 support may allow for faster speeds than its Ethernet port, depending on the router and environment

Don't forget to send in your questions for Mikah to answer during the show! [email protected]

Host: Mikah Sargent

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Coming up on Hands on Tech, we are going to take a look at the plague of Auto On features.
0:07.8	We will take a look at how to deal with your devices powering on when you don't expect them to.
0:15.3	Stay tuned for this episode of Hands on Tech.
0:17.3	This is Twit.
0:31.0	Hello and welcome to Hands on Tech, the show, where you write in with your tech questions,
0:35.0	and I write back, no, I speak back with your tech answers.
0:42.3	You can email me, HOT at twit.tv, to ask your question. And I am happy,
0:48.1	happy, happy to answer it. Today, we've got a little short episode. We're going to answer one question. We'll have a little bit of follow-up. But I would love to get going. Richard has written in, and Richard has written in with an
0:56.8	interesting question because it offers the opportunity to talk about something that you might
1:03.0	miss when you're setting up your devices and that actually is a feature of not just the
1:09.6	television that we'll be talking about, but also many
1:12.9	a tech device. And that is the sort of power on behavior or auto on behavior or default power
1:21.4	behavior. It has a bunch of different names. But let's take a look at Richard's question.
1:25.3	So Richard writes, I have a 65 inch TCL TV that I bought a couple of years ago.
1:32.4	I notice that most of the time, if the power goes out even for a few seconds, when it comes back
1:39.3	on, usually the TV will turn itself on.
1:42.5	Sometimes the cable box will do this as well.
1:45.7	Why? Thanks.
1:47.6	Richard, again, thank you for your question on this.
1:50.4	The TCL TVs actually have a feature, and again, this is a feature of many a smart TV,
1:56.1	that basically keeps the device powered on, but has the display turned off.
2:03.4	The reason for this is so that you are able to turn this on, and then you are able to use this
	...

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