I have a feeling no one will be able to help me with my problem, but I'm clinging to a small hope. If you have had a smilar issue, please let me know how you resolved it.

I own a Sears TV which is only about five years old and worked great until I accidently hit a button called "Twin View" on my Sony remote. I realize my TV does not have that ability, but my experiances with Universals in the past have been that if you don't have the feature it just plain doesn't work.

In this case, after a couple seconds my TV picture turned black and snowy and I was not able to power off with the remote or even manualy walk up to the TV. Instead, I had to unplug my television. When I plugged it back in my picture reception looked as though someone had run a magnet through it and everything in the menu was in Japanese!

I was able to restore the English, but now Japanese, which wasn't even one of the language options before, has replaced Spanish and French.

The biggest issue, though, is still my messed up picture! It moves to different sizes, has underlayers of color, and white streaks run through intermittedly. The menu options have also shifted off to my left, making them difficult to read.

What I have tried:
Leaving the TV unplugged for extended periods of time

Going back into the menu making sure everything is CATV and even played with all other possible options... I mean, there is not a button I haven't tried.

Hitting Twin View to undo what I did. This results in taking me back to square one and not being able to even power off my TV, and then I have to reset the Japanese to English again.

Someone suggested selecting "Guide". This did nothing.

The Manual says pressing "tv/video", "Power", and "volume" will reset everything, but nothing happens.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I really don't want to fork out the money for a new TV over a remote glich. Everything had been working fine until that stupid "Twin View" mishap.

So, last night while watching a DVD, I could clearly see ghostlike duplicates of the images on my screen in the background. This leads me to believe that maybe my TV isn't messed up, it just isn't compatable with the twin view feature and it is for some reason impossible to turn this wacked out feature off with the current remote.

My brainstorm of the day is to simply purchase a more updated model of the universal, one hopefully with an off switch. It couldn't be that easy... could it?

We will soon find out.

Twin View normally doesn't have an off switch. Press-it's on, press again-it's off. So another remote with Twin View will have the same effect.

What's the model number of your Sears TV? I probably won't be able to do much even with the model number but I would like to try and go a little further.

Thanks for the reply, Ron. Even if it is unsolvable I greatly appreciate your efforts.

My logic was that maybe there was just a glich in that (2006) model, and purchasing a newer version might "fix" things. I had hoped all I really needed to do was switch it off and everything would be sunshine and rainbows again.

BUT... I did go to the Sony store today, and the guy working there emphasized what you have just said. He thought that the only possible solution would be to try and locate an original version of the remote and reprogram it, or pay to have the TV serviced.

Sears did say they would try to find a JVC (formally Sears brand) remote when they "weren't so busy," but he gave little hope this would accomplish anything either. Later I spoke with a technician who thinks no remote of any brand is going to help me. He thinks I have somehow unlocked a setting only accessable to the manufacturer.

I guess its sort of a chicken and the egg situation. Both places think I should get it serviced, but at the other guys, (or my own,) cost.

Only the serial number of my TV is listed on the back of it to make matters even worse, but if it helps the owners manual claims the model # is 774 15481.

Thanks again, and please don't dedicate too much time to it. It is likely something that can't be fixed from our end.

If you google 774 15481 you will see a couple of other people are having similar problems but with other functions, so you are not alone, and you're probably right that it would take a major service visit to get it fixed.

Google also said it was a Panasonic but that doesn't help much either.

Sounds like some bad firmware bugs in that model.

Stories of remotes wrecking televisions with a single command are in the category of old wives' tales, but there is a very small grain of truth to it and you may just have been unlucky enough to own one of those grains.

Ecila,
To reset, have you pressed the three keys on the TV or the remote? I guess that it should be on the TV.

Groovy! I'm going to have to take a look at that. Earlier I typed in "JVC TV" along with the model number, and it brought me to a whole lot of websites that weren't in English (ironically enough, Japanese lol.)

Sorry to be so obsessive about this issue. I can't decide if its the TV addict in me, or the techy geek wannabe aspect of my personality that is so pathetically desperate to solve this.

Either way, thanks Ron

Yes, "Firmware" is what the Sony guy labeled it, but he said I would have had to press a series of special buttons to activate it.

The funny thing is that when I lost the original I didn't buy a universal for almost a year. People laughed at me because I was soooo paranoid that another device could somehow "hack" my tv. Well, people, who's laughing now? Eerrmm... I guess not me.

Gotta love that Murphy's law.

Thanks Daniel. Now the issue will be to convince Sony and/or Sears that I'm not an old wife. Have a feeling I'm still gonna be the one who foots the bill at the end of this.

I have pressed the three buttons it tells me to on the remote. Nothing happens. The TV doesn't appear to have a reset, or at least none that are mentioned in the owner's manual. The Sears people don't seem to be aware of such a thing existing either.

Thanks for the suggestion, though. Maybe I'll try tossing the remote through the TV and see if that clears away the static.

Pressing 3 buttons on the remote won't do anything. It's going to have to be done using the actual buttons on the TV.

I figured that so messed around with a few different combinations there too. I couldn't try every possible variant, of course. The odds of me being able to solve this without a repair guy seems very slim.

Thanks for weighing in again, Daniel.

I have a Sony KP57WS520 with twin view. Try this reset procedure.
1) Press Power on the remote to turn the TV on.
2) Holding down the reset button on the remote push the Power button on the TV. The TV will turn off, then back on.
3) Now release the reset button.

I tried this on my set and it worked perfectly. Good Luck

Hi Anthony,

Unfortunately, every code combination I could come up with was exhausted and I was finally forced to admit defeat. My poor, clunky yet loyal companion of a blissful five years was laid to rest at my local TV repairman's home. TOD: Dec. 5, 2009; all possible means to resuscitate were implemented.

I felt like I was replacing the family pet when he delivered a used version of the former model, but so far it works keen. It really sucks though that it was at my cost because of the touch of one button on a remote. I can't believe it was so easy for a dimwit like me to access something only a manufacturer should in less than five minutes, and even someone trusted in the business for over 25 years wasn't able to reverse it.

I appreciate your response, Anthony. Sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. I did return the remote which covered $15.99 of my new $90.00 TV, but I'm 100 percent certain my model did not have a reset button in any case. The combination to restore everything back to normal written in my manual failed to work.

Thanks again for trying to help me out. Good peeps like you make the world go 'round.