All of a sudden, possibly Saturday, Oct. 31, my favorite (local PBS) TV station stopped providing sound!
History: Sometime Saturday, I heard my wife ask me to come fix the TV in the den. But almost immediately she said "Never mind, I got it working." Of course, I was greatly relieved!
Equipment set up: The set up is complicated because the cable input now goes through a HD converter box to the DVD player and then to the TV. Except for the converter box, all this equipment is analog. The converter box is usually OFF and the signal is "passed through" to the DVD/TV.
Problem discovery: Last night I decided to change channels since Judy is not feeling well (cold, sinus infection or impending flu) and left the room for bed rest. Switching to the PBS station, I saw the usual good image but absolutely no sound!
Problem solving attempts:1. At first I thought I might have turned down the volume accidentally. This would be difficult as there is no "Mute" button on the remote, so going from normal volume to silence would require holding a button for a few seconds (with the usual visual indications on screen). But I increased and decreased the 'volume' with the correct visual indications but absolutely no audio effect.
2. Assumed that the TV's sound functions had decided to leave, but to confirm, I changed channels. HAH! That channel had sound! OK, back to the PBS channel. No change, no sound. OK, the station must be having technical problems and will soon have a 'scrowler' stating same. With my usual abundance of patience slowly leaving me, I went to another room with a TV and selected the PBS station. Normal sound! I guess they fixed the problem while I was walking from one room to another! So I went back to the den to view the TV. No sound, again! Back to the other TV. Normal sound! Back to the den. No sound. I discounted the idea that, unbeknownst to me, someone had installed a muting switch between these two rooms. The problem
must be in the TV.
3. Found the remote for the TV. Entered its menu functions, selected the Sound control screen and saw that nothing was amiss, as far as I could tell. Of course, not! Three steps is way too fast to solve a problem!
4. Back to the TV and selected channels with the TV remote. Selected the PBS channel heard the sound as expected! Aha! The TV is functioning normally!
5. Checked the operation of the TV with the signal coming via the set top box alone. Everything is fine!
6. That could be the end of things, except I can't get Dirty Jobs this way! So I must press onward in my quest!
7. Set everything back to the 'normal' arrangement. Using the DVD controller to operate the TV along with the volume. Still no sound from that channel...then I noticed something that I'd never noticed before. Each time a channel is selected/entered via the remote, there is a little box that appears displaying the channel number as expected. But the new info was that there was also the sound source being displayed! All of them indicated "SAP." But I had just verified that the TV was set for
no SAP and
no Closed
Captioning. But then I noticed something even more strange! I found that the PBS info indicated "CCSAP"! What in the world was that?
First of all, the TV should not be doing that. Secondly, the text was not especially sharp and the "CC" looked more like "((" but I decided that it really was for "Closed Captioning". Of course, there
was no captions showing on any channel.
A second discovery was even more interesting. I was now finding several other channels without sound! Many were channels I never view or immediately skip when surfing stations sequentially. But some were channels I've viewed and now they had no sound!
8. Doesn't this indicate that the problem may be in the DVD player? Seems logical, but why do different channels show different audio sources and captioning options? Finally, where are the settings functions for the player? No settings menu on the remote. Only settings seem to be for recording a DVD, which ceased to work many months ago!
Player and TV are Panasonic models. TV at least 10 years old. Player probably only three years old. I'm off to the Panasonic site to see if there is any help there. Otherwise, I'm planning on disconnecting the DVD to save one remote! But this weird behavior is just a challenge I hate to ignore.
"Can you hear me now?"
