Problems with my 65" Vizio Smart TV....fixed!!
 

My 8 year old 65" 4K Vizio started failing a few days ago. It has built in apps for dozens of services (Netflix, Prime, etc.) and when I would open any of them the screen display would go black at about the 2 minute mark and stay that way until I restarted the tv. Over and over. The comcast cable channels were not affected at all.

I called Vizio and was connected to a guy who spent almost an hour with me trying to diagnose the trouble. Double check all connections, factory reset, firmware reload. Nothing helped.

He said he has seen it happen before and it's repairable. The bad part is..no warranty and the whole control board would need to be swapped. $500 plus labor. Not worth it, I'll just watch Comcast.

Yesterday, a light came on in my head.....I picked up a Kindle 4K Fire Stick. I plugged it in to the HDMI input on the Vizio and all apps are now working fine...using the $26 Fire Stick!!

As the saying goes..."More than one way to skin a cat" :)

Awesome!!!! Glad you fixed it and found a cheap fix at that. [emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

^^^ Thanks...I feel like calling the Vizio guy back and asking why he didn't recommend doing that.
I doubt I would get to talk to the same person...not worth it.

Have you gotten the blues yet? My 8-9 year old 65 Vizio has the blue tint/ bad led strip(s) dilemma.

^^^ No...I have not seen that yet on mine. I used to frequent the AVS forum and remember reading quite a few comments from others that have it.

I did notice that with this new 4K Stick that Netflix seems to look better than ever. I haven't tried any of the others yet.

*** warning - ignurrent questions follow ***

So the problem is that your TV can't receive wireless broadband so you are redirecting it thru the firestick into a hdmi port?

Must you have Amazon Prime for the Firestick to work?

Could you have used a CAT6 cable from your modem to your TV?

I have always had it cabled to my modem...still do, it goes into my Comcast receiver.
The FireStick picks up my wifi.
The signal part checks out fine...it was in the motherboard of the tv....something in there wasn't allowing the apps to stay open...2 minutes at most...then black screen.

No, you don't need Prime to use a FireStick. You just won't be able to watch Prime without paying.

Having worked as a Porsche mechanic for 42 years and having called the PCNA help desk many times in the last 10 or 20 of those years, I get it. While they do have a data base to share all their knowledge with each other, I still think it’s the luck of the draw as to which guy you get. I had one guy I always called and relied on.

Nice find BTW! Clever.

^^^ On my call...I was expecting to get a lady from Malaysia or India trying to help me.
I have difficulty understanding them. The guy that I had was very easy to understand.

I also wonder if they are told to not recommend anything other than Vizio parts and service.

Because the TV isn't fixed.
It sounds like what you had is a TV where the hardware worked fine, but the software was "glitchy".
You've now effectively bolted a new brain onto the side of the TV. So the hardware is still working, and the new brain is still working, but if you remove the new brain or it dies, you're back to a broken TV.

It would be like taking a Jaguar to a Jaguar dealer and having them tell you to take it to an indy place to have an LSx swap done to fix a tap in the Jag motor. They can't/shouldn't tell you that. And the Jag motor would still be broken.

^^^ I understand that....but at the point where he told me that the board would be $500 plus labor, I told him it wasn't worth it to me. He could have said "try a firestick"

Company rules may frown on it.

I worked at a place that had a $375,000 photo printer. It was marketed and sold as a Kodak machine, but it used high end IBM computers, and a Noritsu processor. When we had problems, we called Kodak. If we were lucky, and it was normal USA working hours, you might get a intelligent savvy tech to help fix it. If it was late at night, we got someone in India, and they had but one solution, load the the Windows NT disks, and start from scratch. That took many hours, as it had a zillion updates. As a geek, I started digging into what the issue was. Ultimately it was just one corrupt file. I set up a batch program that would backup that file to a folder on the RAID and add that days date to it. When we had an issue, I had a second batch file to get the good file from the previous day and restore it. We were back up and running in minutes.
Kodak wanted to know how we did that. They charged us huge money per month for the tech support. We told them one year of free tech support and I will tell them. They refused, so we never shared the solution. Eff em.

Firestick for the win. You did good.:cool:

^^^ That's funny!
They would have prob been better off taking your offer in the long run.

The funny part is that whenever any friends talked of using a firestick...I would kinda ignore what they were talking about because my tv had it all built in.

Sometimes convenient isn't the best way.:)

PCNA also had several PQMS(acronyms for everything with them) dealers who did product quality monitoring. Our dealership was one of the monitors and the help desk used this info to help solve problems. I always felt like if it helped some other tech stuck on a problem it was a good thing. Plus I got paid a little something for every report I made!

Stevej37, I know what you mean with the foreign accents on the phone…I get embarrassed after the fifth time I say “what???”

This is why I don't buy smart TV's.

Much easier to hang an Apple TV or ROKU of it.

If the TV goes tits up just move the peripheral and move on with life.

I remember when I bought this Vizio eight years back...it was $998 at Walmart.
Now, the same level TV is half that price. It still has an excellent picture.

Put a fire stick in my TV in the RV, a bargain for $26.

Yes they are a bargain. This one I bought is 4k and Alexa enabled...lol
I have the Alexa system, but I really don't need it for my tv remotes. I would rather push a button or two instead of talking/shouting at my remote.:)