Hi everyone,
I have a TV on a rolling stand that I move in front of my bed every night and put away every morning. Every night, I plug it in to watch, and every morning I unplug it before rolling it away. There's no option to keep the TV in a fixed position—this setup is necessary for my space.
A few months ago, the power supply unit failed and had to be repaired. I'm now wondering if the repeated daily plugging and unplugging be contributing to this kind of failure?

Here’s some context:
- I always turn the TV off at night before falling asleep.
- I unplug it the next morning before moving it.
- The plug is a standard wall socket, no surge protector.

I suspect the daily power cycling or physical connection/disconnection might be affecting the PSU over time.

My question is if you think this behavior could be damaging the power supply? and if so, what can I do to minimize the risk of failure while still unplugging it each day?

Thanks for any advice or insight—trying to make sure this doesn’t happen again!
Thomas

 

Most switching power supplies now are quite rugged, for e.g. my mains power PC's have the power removed every night and they in to a couple of decades of operation.
I don't recall ever losing a power supply!

 

Living in a country where mains sockets have switches, things get switched on and off much more often, and I have not noticed much in the way of power supply failures

 

what was the failure? cable flexed too much or too often? btw everything will fail eventually - even with no use.

 

I suppose in theory it's possible, perhaps some poor design particular to that TV.

 

It wasn't a failure of the power cord, but rather a failure of the PSU (the power supply board inside the TV).
I'm not sure what broke, the specialist just told me the PSU failed, and he fixed it so it started working again.

 

To bad he didn't specify exactly what component/failure etc actually occured !
Usually job security!

 

I always power down my three TV's, streaming sticks, and soundbars when not watching, using smart plugs to avoid the vampire current draw (of course there's still the vampire draw from the plugs ).
Haven't had a failure yet, and I've been doing that for several years.

 

Thanks everyone for your input. I'll continue plugging and unplugging with no regrets!
Best,
Thomas

 

Really, what may wear out is the pins on the mains plug. BUT long before that the wheels on that rolling stand will wear out. In addition, by unplugging the set you protect it from serious voltage spikes in case lightning strikes you local power lines.

 

What comes to my mind now, a day later, is the early "smart" TV a friend had. She had it plugged into a switched outlet that she always switched off. Then when she switched it back on, it always took TWO MINUTES to initialize itself. But if she only switched it off and theft the outlet powered on, it only took about 15 seconds to come on. So the unplugging was a time-waster issue. NO DAMAGE, just time wasting.

 

Then when she switched it back on, it always took TWO MINUTES to initialize itself.

I have three smart TV's and they all initialize in the same time whether the power has been off or left on.

 

I have three smart TV's and they all initialize in the same time whether the power has been off or left on.

The TV I mentioned was not nearly THAT smart. It was not a big flat screen TV, but rather one of the first to include a processor that had to reload all of it's memory from one of those very early non-volatile memory IC devices.

 

To bad he didn't specify exactly what component/failure etc actually occured !
Usually job security!

It's been my experience that repair tech's often determine which board has failed and they replace it without digging into why it failed.

I had a TV power supply fail a very long time ago. The bridge rectifier shorted. I replaced that and all was good again. Lasted another 7 years. And it was always plugged in. Instant ON TV's constantly kept tubes warm so that when you turned the set on you didn't have to wait for it to "Warm Up". Now There's a term I bet you old timers haven't heard in a while. You youngsters probably have no idea of what I'm saying. Today's TV's have to load up just like my computer.

 

Instant ON TV's constantly kept tubes warm so that when you turned the set on you didn't have to wait for it to "Warm Up"

Remember it well.
One way to do that was to connect a diode rectifier across the switch to apply half-wave voltage to the filaments.
It was connected in the opposite polarity of the half-wave rectifier that powered the plates in the the transformer-less receivers.

I recall doing that to a 5-tube clock radio I had.