My Dvd Player Keeps Turning Itself on an I Shut It Off and It Comes Open Again

Q: My Blu-ray player turns on and off past itself sometimes. Is it haunted?

A: You tin blame a glitchy implementation of a basically sensible way for stereo and video gadgets to talk to each other — which, sadly, you tin simply set by diving into the thespian's settings screens.

That standard goes by the ungainly moniker of HDMI CEC — curt for High Definition Multimedia Interface Consumer Electronics Control. It'due south designed to let the thick HDMI cables running betwixt a TV and other gadgets carry not but audio and video, but instructions to one another.

When properly functioning, HDMI CEC (marketed by Samsung as "Anynet") frees you from having to fiddle with multiple remotes to do things equally basic as sentry a DVD or Blu-ray disc.

Pick up one remote to turn on the DVD or Blu-ray player, and that gadget tells the TV and your audio/video receiver, if applicable, to plough on as well and switch to the appropriate input. And unlike outset-generation implementations, this doesn't require that all of your hardware come up from the same company.

That promise led me to recommend trying this pick two years agone here. But in practice, HDMI CEC can easily scramble your screening experience.

For instance, you may not know it'south at that place until you plug in a new device, power it on and find that it or other hardware at the gadget end of the living room are now switching on or off unexpectedly. Run into, for example, this tech-back up asking from a confused owner of a new Blu-ray player.

Or the HDMI CEC conversation between devices may get lost in translation. That appears to be the case with our own Blu-ray player: If I turn it on, either with a remote control or past pressing the button on its front, the Tv and the receiver/soundbar-speaker combo both switch on. But turning off the Blu-ray player leaves those two other gadgets on.

HDMI CEC tin can besides magnify other glitches with your hardware. At some point, our Blu-ray player began spontaneously turning itself back on after being shut off with a disc inside — resulting in the Boob tube and and so the soundbar also being switched on, with a corresponding fasten in electricity usage. And later being close off, it would resuscitate itself unbidden once again, with the bike standing until I ejected the disc.

A long round of debugging led to me trying to reset the player to its factory settings (don't laugh, but I also had to do that with my Tv a few months agone). That eased the problem somewhat, in that the role player now only turns on by itself if I'd been playing a disc and, once shut downward afterwards that, stays off.

Before doing some kind of factory reset of your consumer electronics, try instead checking to see if it has whatsoever firmware updates available. On "smart" TVs or Blu-ray players that can connect to online video services like Netflix, you can make this check through their settings or preferences screens.

On devices without an Internet connection, yous may take to visit the manufacturer's site to download an updater file that you can and so transfer to the device on a USB wink drive. Either way — yeah, I detest having to say this — y'all'll take to bank check your device's transmission for specific instructions.

If that doesn't cure HDMI CEC hiccups, you lot may want to disable this selection and go back to turning on devices 1 at a time. I thought about doing that, but I'm going to go along it enabled: As I type this, I have no thought where the Blu-ray player's remote went in the living room.

Tip: Perpendicular pointing for Wi-Fi antennas

The Mac Observer interviewed sometime Apple Wi-Fi engineer Alf Watt (too renowned for writing the Wi-Fi diagnostic app iStumbler) on its podcast two weeks ago, and its post summarizing Watt's tips includes ane upgrade that doesn't require touching whatsoever software. To wit: If your Wi-Fi router, like many, features a pair of external antennas you tin can motion around, bespeak one straight upward and the other level, at a right angle from the commencement.

(Watt's advice for routers with internal antennas, like Apple's AirPorts: keep them in their obvious orientation, with any plastic or rubber anxiety on the bottom.)

I came across the Mac Observer's article via a mail at Lifehacker, and that'due south worth reading, too, for the helpful answers by Watt (typing as "iStumbler") in the comments thread.

Rob Pegoraro is a tech author based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, eastward-postal service Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/robpegoraro.

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2014/07/27/blu-ray-tips/13094283/

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