Remote Hell. Grrr!!! (1 Viewer)

THERE SHOULD BE A RESET, or UNDO CHANGE button!!!!.

For when someone accidentally pushes who-knows-which button on these humongous remotes, and something on the system won't work.

We just somehow lost tv a few minutes ago, can only get play on DVD or VCR channel, the cable TV alternates on 1 second intervals between all static, and a channel pic laced with static..

Have pushed almost very button (about 24, excluding channel and volume buttons), no luck yet

The Sony booklet, in terms of accessible and relevant information in it, is less usable to me than the Dead Sea Scrolls, upside down in a mirror

Hope I get lucky and don't have to call Mr Sony on Monday morning, ‘cause by that time, I might be very sarcastic with him

Yet one more reason to love my Pronto, and similar PC-programmable remotes. On the rare ocassion when I have lost vital features I just plug it into my PC and download the last good copy of the configuration file.

I realize this doesn't help you, but it does make me feel better, and that's the point, isn't it?

Regards,

Joe

Try turning off the TV for a few minutes. That might help.

Mike

Or try uplugging the set. After power outages my Toshiba invariably needs to be uplugged before it will come back on. You should also check your basic TV settings. Certain problems can cause sets to lose their cable band settings and revert to "ANT", which will prevent them from picking up anything but the strongest over the air signals. It may not be anything anyone did with the remote. Power glitches cause problems all the time. (Which is why my set is plugged into a battery back-up and only has these problems when the lights are out for a really long time.)

Regards,

Joe

Well, now we can get one channel on the video channel, but can't change it, (tho for what its worth, we can get all the cable channels we subscribe to, but only thru the VCR channel..).

May try the unplug approach, and if that doesn't kick things back, will find the factory reset and try to start over again..

It isn't just badly designed remotes and lousy manuals.

For example, this morning some scum ware hijacked my browser again, and delivered two or three pop up ads to me, so I had to reset for my regular homepage.

I have several degrees, have held responsible jobs, have only been in one automobile accident, but I can't control a TV remote, and my personal computer is an open door to intrusive nags.

So, I firmly believe, The fault lies not in me, dear friends, but in crummy technology!

Get Ad-Aware & Ad-Watch from Lavasoft. Works great on spyware.

Also, set your browser to run only authorized active-x and scripts. That'll help cut down on stuff. Makes it a bit of pain to run sometimes - like on HTF, where I have to authorize the active-x on the main page, plus some other stuff - but you ain't getting hijacked.

umm, did we suddenly change topic here????

Sort of - but mostly in regard to his comment about stuff getting loaded on his PC.

To get it back on track... I still think turning off or disconnecting the TV will help. In most cases this should take care of any weird setting. Setup menus are another place to look, as are service menus...

Mike

OK, we tried the set up function again. Cryptic on-screen messages, and hard-to-find buttons on the humungous remote a given, we nevertheless tried them in good faith.

We got nowhere, just blue air.

Problem : The TV has 4 Video channels to cycle thru - we have the DVD player to one, the VCR to another, one unused (no gamers here), and the last used to get our TV channels via the cable. The problem is the last one could not be accessed, except to get one channel. The numeric pad, and the channel + and - (up-or-down) function was inoperative.

So, we tried the return-to factory reset mode. No progress.

So we went to full unplug phase of the project.

This may have been what accomplished the most. (Thanks for the tip guys. Though we have pushed so many buttons in the last few days, we don't know for sure what did what.)

Anyway, we now can get the full range of channels we subscribe to thru Video 4, but only thru the numeric pad on the remote. The channel + and - is still inoperative, which severely constricts channel flicking.

At least we can tape on one channel, while watching a program on another.

I'm not happy, or finished, but it drives me to observe :

These systems have too many overlaps of too many controls - picture and audio quality are one thing, but language, captioning, Favorite channels, PIP, parental controls, eg, with one button having different functions depending on which buttons are pressed prior to it, is another story.

And I don't know whether Sony Manuals have any particular reputation, but this one dares to say - "your set may not look like this illustration, after all we put out this chintzy 20 page pamphlet to serve 5 different models", or words to that effect. And its full of undefined terms or features. I still have no idea what "Channel Fix"' is, but we left it off.

Now, if anyone can get me Mr Sony's number, I still have something to say to him.

Oooogh, I could have helped you out if you posted your problem in full earlier. having "channel fix" on was definitely your problem (this is useful if you use an external tuner).

With your channel +/- thing, make sure that your remote is actually controlling the TV set, and not a phantom device.(ie, if your set is like mine, hit the green "TV" button to set the remote to actually control the TV).

Finally, there is an option (furthest right menu) which hides all of those scary messed up menus (basic mode).

Selecting this option restricts you to contrast and volume controls, I think. Hope this helps.

I'm not sure whether Channel Fix was ever on, but the "phantom" controls sounds like what this remote looks like - buttons that only do something with auxiliary equipment if you program them on?

This set is a Sony KV27V66, from about 3-4 years ago.

I don't see anything like "basic mode" on the remote. Until I speak with Mr Sony, I think I'm going to leave well enough alone for now. Jason, thanks for the thoughts tho