Not sure if this is the right place to post but would appreciate any feedback before I decide to buy a new TV.
In November 2021 I bought a TCL 6 Series 55 inch 4K HDR Roku TV (model 55R635). Up until now I’ve been extremely happy with it and had no issues whatsoever until last Sunday while I was playing my Saturn (using a RetroTink 5x Pro) when suddenly the sound started glitching and getting really choppy. I freaked out wondering if it was something like disc rot with the game or the Saturn laser failing. Anyways, after about 10-15 seconds the screen froze up and I couldn’t get the remote to respond or go back to the home screen. Eventually the red TCL reboot screen came on and the TV restarted. I checked my Saturn and the game was still running where I’d left off.
Then the same thing happened multiple times while playing Tears of the Kingdom on my Switch. I’d be in the middle of the game, and after about 30 minutes of playing the sound would start freezing and glitching before the TV would crash and reboot just like it did with the Saturn. The TV would also crash and reboot after about 20-30 minutes of streaming any given show. Also intermittent issues with the remote acting glitchy/slow/unresponsive. I went online and researched as many solutions as I could with various power resets/cycling/reseating the power cord, reseating HDMI cords, checking that the firmware was up to date, ect. I called TCL tech support yesterday and they mostly ran me through the same steps I found online. The support rep said a new firmware update went out and said based on my internet speed (8mbps, getting it upgraded to around 350 next week) they think the crashing is possibly being caused by a combination of the new firmware update plus the TV reaching out in the background to the wifi/poor connection as the rep also said 15mbps is the minimum recommended speed for a TCL smart TV. So that’s one idea but I dunno.
Last night the freezing and crashing got so bad it was starting to just frequently reboot in a non stop cycle unless I unplugged the TV. I did a full factory reset and that only worked for a bit, Earlier today I tried one more thing, I went into one of the TV’s “secret menus” and forced it to re-install the current firmware. After installing and restarting it seemed to be fixed. I was able to watch two streaming episodes of a show and then played TotK on my a switch for at least an hour, no more glitching and crashing. After an hour I came back and fired up my Saturn and played for about 30 minutes….now it’s back. I was able to take a quick video of the glitching while it was happening right before the TV crashed (uploaded to my Twitter):
https://twitter.com/crowtgamer/status/1661569444169269251?s=46&t=vwi6fqbz7bKyA9KuJaUxlA
Someone on the TV thread on ResetEra said it’s likely a bad chip set but I wanted to reach out for one more opinion in case anyone here had the same issue. Assuming I’ll be getting a new TV soon I’d also definitely take any recommendations for a better brand that works well for upscaling on 1080p sources like Switch and is also properly compatible with my RetroTink (for context I briefly owned an LG 4K in 2018 which I had to return as Switch games looked terrible on it and not sure if some TVs don’t work well with upscaling devices).