Bought a nice widescreen monitor from Samsung through B&H Photo. 2 weeks later it wouldn't turn on. Shipped it in thrice for repairs and on the third time Samsung exchanged it for a new one. 7 days later the new one won't turn on. Same symptoms. The seller's money-back guarantee has expired, of course. No idea if Samsung will just give me the original value in cash so I can find another one from another manufacturer who knows how to make monitors. I'll probably just get ripped off. Time to die?

Bad grounding?

Pinging @Condor for electrical advice.

B&H are usually pretty good.

@Root hmm. Well, now I have something new to try. Another outlet.

@iAmNaN I know. That’s what I’m so surprised at. But they’re out of the picture now that the warranty expired.

Also, make sure your are using a quality surge suppressor. Especially in Florida.

@stackodev Could also be a poorly-implemented "deep sleep" option. Some Dell monitors have that issue. It looks like the monitor is fried because it will not turn on again, but it's just "sleeping."

I swapped the old surge protector for a newer one right before the new monitor came. So I’m pretty sure that’s not it. And it does turn on power wise but the screen just flashes green horizontal lines and then won’t display anything. I can fiddle with the onscreen menu but nothing from the computer appears.

@stackodev Bad cable? Bad connection?
How often have you shocked it?

Try a different cable type (hdmi, dp, tb/usbc, vga)

Also try the monitor on a different computer, if possible.

@Root yup. Have tried all those things. Tried a different outlet tonight as well. Other monitors work fine on the computer so it’s not the computer that’s bad. They replaced the motherboard of the first monitor and sent it back. When that didn’t work I shipped it back and all they did was send it back to me with a new power cable (no other work done). I’ve also tried two different HDMI cables with it on two different computers. All I have is HDMI on both computers, no VGA or other connection types.

@theKarlisK Aye.

@Root thanks for the mention! 😊
I'd doubt that it's bad grounding, as ground is really just a safety measure to prevent metal enclosures in appliances with electrical faults (e.g. a live track/wire touching the enclosure) from becoming live and shocking people. It doesn't serve any other purpose really.

3 broken TV's in a row definitely seems odd though. Did the power supply for it get exchanged as well? If not, that's where I'd look first. And be sure that you're using the recommended charger that came with the thing rather than a knockoff of course.

As mentioned by @iAmNaN, surge protection is equally important. Normally a surge should trip a fuse or even better be suppressed by a MOV inside the power supply.. but hey, you never know right. There's quite a few shitty designs out there so it wouldn't surprise me if they omitted the MOV. Just to be sure, always put a surge protector outlet/power strip in front of anything you care about though.

I'd be really interested in seeing the failure mode of this thing (I mean it's Samsung, which is supposed to be high-end, right), but getting it shipped across the pond for analysis might get a bit costly 😅

Hmm.. green lines on the monitor. Well the power supply is definitely not dead then... And using HDMI which is pretty much display or no display (rather than those green lines).. several confuzers and cables.. well, maybe it's just a bad display motherboard after all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks all for your comments. The last support person I talked to mentioned that "it could be a bad batch of monitors". In that case, I'm probably better off getting them to send me a completely different model. I really wanted to like this monitor because it's big and curvy and I'm able to put a LOT of stuff on the screen for productivity. The fact that no other monitor I have that I've tried with this same computer has "burned out" or whatever makes this one very suspect. BTW, this is the one giving me trouble. It was one of the highest-recommended monitors of this type, so naturally I bought it. https://samsung.com/us/computing/...

Anyone have a 34" monitor you recommend?

Try the LG 27UD58 27" 4K monitor. I've had mine for about six months, and it's a great gaming monitor. Watching streaming content is pretty sweet, too. It has a lot of realestate for multiple windows/p programs, especially at the higher resolutions.

@Condor Bad grounding -> shocks/esd -> fried circuits -> green bands. That was my theory.

Bad/dying power supply could also overvolt the device and slowly cause damage. That was my second theory. Fits nicely because the later displays died more quickly (and bad psu's only ever get worse), and it's the only thing unchanged. I've had a couple of dying PC psu's fry my components before.

@Root Hmm.. bad grounding possibly causing ESD damage.. not sure. Assuming that the enclosure is metal and someone that charged themselves touches it, if it's grounded it will just get dissipated into ground. If not, the case is floating and will just charge itself up from the human and remain at that potential for a while I guess. All assuming that the internal circuit isn't touching the metal enclosure of course, which in ungrounded stuff should be ensured (double insulation). So I don't really think that ESD should do too much damage in that case? And of course, the extremely low amount of energy transferred would only be able to fry the really sensitive components like IC's maybe, other components can take a wee surge if it's short and with sufficiently low energy.

ElectroBOOM has a video on this: https://youtube.com/watch/...

As for power supplies overvolting on their output over time.. not sure, but that would be a *really* shitty power supply if it overvolts rather than failing open circuit (from a fried component or whatever). But I guess it could be the case in some designs... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Condor You're the electrical engineer here 😊 I'll defer to you.

However, bad/dying PSU's absolutely can cause damage, and could cause the effects seen here, so that's still my prevailing theory.

@Root that's definitely true.. I've seen stories of some even being referenced to live on their output, touching which would make for a really bad day.. probably even the last.

Big Clive video for reference (as you may have noticed already I'm really a visual learner :P): https://youtube.com/watch/...

Plot twist. I fiddled with combinations of HDMI and different power cords I have for it from all this back and forth. And suddenly it started working again. And I have no idea how. No pattern, again, to the whole thing.

@stackodev will, that's a good thing. Make notes of the working configuration, and keep it that way. And but new cables, just in case.

@iAmNaN that’s the weird thing. I was so confused by it all that I put it all back the way it was again to see if it really was the cables. And it still works. So the cables all have to be fine if they’re all able to get it to work. Gotta be something in software or circuitry that just gets in a “bad mood”.