I live in a new apartment (about two years old), and have lived there for about two months without any electrical issues. I have an older 40 inch 1080p LCD tv (about 7-8 years old) in our bedroom (the bedroom is on the same electrical circuit as our bathroom). The other day, I went to turn on the tv and the picture was out. I just assumed the bulb or something finally went, but I know this can be caused by other issues.
In going to troubleshoot, I unplugged the tv and plugged it back in (it's plugged in directly into an outlet, along with an Amazon Firestick), as soon as I did this, the rest of the power on the same circuit went out (lights wouldn't turn on in bedroom/bathroom, no other outlet was supplying power, and the outlet in question also stopped providing power as well.) What's weird is that this didn't trip the breaker.
The apartment maintenance came and said it's because the tv was pulling too much power, so simply unplugging it brought power back to the the circuit. I tried the tv on other outlets and it didn't cause this issue (the tv bulb is still seemingly dead, but power on the tv works), and other electronics on the same outlet didn't cause this issue either. I also had like maybe one other small device on the same circuit at the time so I can't imagine it would be overloaded. I have little to no electrical knowledge (clearly), but I didn't think a device could somehow cut power to the rest of the circuit without tripping a breaker, especially an LCD tv, malfunctioning or not.
I'm beginning to wonder now too if the tv issue was a result of something electrical (a chicken or the egg scenario I suppose). there were no power surges or anything else unusual occurring ahead of time. I guess I'm just trying to feel out if this sounds like a normal occurrence, because I'd hate to buy a new tv and have it turn out that the electrical circuit is the cause of the original tv going out, and have the same thing happen again.
Thanks in advance for an electrical knowledge or insight.
Best Answer
+1 on GFCI , being an older tv , looks like you have an increase in leakage current on that tv.Could be caused by alot of things going faulty.
What you can do: Basically go the circuit panel turn it off (to see which devices are connected)and start unplugging all devices on that circuit and see if it still trips with ONLY the TV connected to verify its the TV.This is because the typical leakage current tolerance is ~20-30mA from A->N on gfci(depends on manufacturer and rating) for ALL devices on that circuit.Each device has a certain leakage current ,could be powerboards(surge protection type) , failing x/y caps ,etc..
But yeah going by gut feeling looks like someones going TV shopping for Christmas :)
Edit: Third paragraph of the OP indicates he's essentially done the trouble shooting you're recommending and that didn't help him out at all.
True ,need sleep :P , therein lies the answer,there is no way to fix leakage current unless you can internally repair the circuit board , so solution is to either get new tv or disassemble tv and find faulty module and replace accordingly.