Miscellaneous Hand Luggage

Have you ever wondered what goes on inside your television? To be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought until last weekend, when smoke started pouring out of my set whenever I tuned it to ITV4. ITV4 is a new channel that repeats everything they show on ITV3 approximately 4 minutes later. I’d not heard anything about it causing smoke to come out of your TV, but I checked on Google to see if anybody else had experienced the same problem.

Google’s great for that sort of thing. The other week I was looking for advice on hair, and I found literally hundreds of hair-related web sites from a single search. Admittedly, none of them had specific advice on how to cook it, but they were all very informative nonetheless.

Anyway, back to my smoking TV. After several hours of searching I stumbled across a discussion board where there were about a dozen posts describing this very same problem. One person had posted:

“Every time I switch my TV over to ITV4, smoke starts pouring out of the back. Also, whenever I put my little fella in a tub of margarine, it feels really good. Does anyone else have these problems?

Posted by: desmondlynam”

One person had replied:

“Hi desmondlynam

Whenever I watch ITV4, smoke AND margarine comes out of the back of my telly. I called the manufacturer, who advised me to place a copy of Good Housekeeping on top of the TV. It seems to have done the trick, as there is neither smoke NOR margarine coming out of the set any more.

Having said that, it has started to smell of marzipan…

Posted by: sireltonjohn”

I tried the Good Housekeeping solution, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Mind you, my TV is widescreen…