Over a period of a few years, I think I've heard about roughly a dozen examples of TV models in which sending unknown IR commands has done serious damage.

Sometime the description of what happened is so implausible that I suspect the user did something else wrong or misinterpreted an unrelated failure. Sometimes the description is plausible and supported by independent reports from other people with related models. Sometimes I can only guess.

Frequently I advise someone to look for themselves to make an informed decision about whether testing for discrete codes is safe. That's a little unfair, because I don't know a decent way to search for those threads; Why should someone with less experience searching remote control forums manage that better than I could.

I think this forum needs a page of direct links to some of the first hand accounts of these disasters.

I don't have such a list. But as one instance was just posted, I might as well attempt to start such a list and edit other links in later as I happen on them.

Panasonic Plasma 42PV500:
[Link: remotecentral.com]

ADVENT TV Q2035A
[Link: hifi-remote.com]
ADVENT TV 2735
[Link: remotecentral.com]

Sharp LC-52D92U (serious but nonpermanent problem IIUC)
[Link: remotecentral.com]

I'd prefer not to discuss (especially not to argue) the questions and conclusions about the dangers of such testing in THIS thread. That would make it harder to see the links to first hand accounts, which are my intended pupose here.

If anyone else has links to first hand accounts of serious damage from sending IR signals, please add them to this thread.

I know I've seen several first hand accounts of Toshiba TV's destroyed, but at the moment I can't find any.

For the record, testing all 256 commands did no harm whatever to MY Toshiba TV nor to any other device I personally have tested.

The subject line of this thread was meant to grab attention more than to be exclusively descriptive of the thread. I do mean to include devices other than TV and serious damage at levels less than "destroyed" and cases (such as most of the Advent TV examples) where discrete code testing WOULD HAVE caused the disaster but actually some other activity sending the bad command did it.

Having worked at a repair / retail / custom install company in the past, and talking with the repair techs, I would just like to add that a lot of brands require a specific sequence to get into the service menu and resetting the EPROM is an option in some cases. I believe that Sony and RCA are both part of this category.

Try to keep track of the order of the codes you tried and post those as well, and if you experience a service menu, don't automatically think that turning the unit off will get it back to normal, power off and back on may just be part of the sequence to do something you don't want.

While trying search mode for specific functions on my OFA6 to operate my new LCD PanasonicTXLXD60 TV I noticed that my tv picture degraded with lots of horizontal lines when any key was pressed.
This only happens when the TV is in analogue mode and only when my tv is connected to a bypass distributor which I use to get Sky round the house.
It also happens when I press a key even if the TV is not receiving the signal for that particular function--i.e. I point the remote away from the TV.
I am going to buy a new distributor in the hope that it is causing this problem.