A couple of months ago, the “replace lamp” indicator on my LG DLP televison came on, so I had Best Buy come out and replace it. [editor"s note: The Cap"n doesn"t normally buy "extended protection plans", but Best Buy covers lamp replacement on digital projection sets - a $100+ part - so I"ll get my money"s worth here]
But after getting the new lamp in, the “replace lamp” indicator never turned off. So yesterday Best Buy came back out to check out the problem. It was the same guy who came before, so he had apparently read up on my TV. When I told him what was up, he said “no problem” and pulled a remote control out of his pocket. I, of course, have a remote that came with the TV. But this remote was special – an “installer remote” the guy said. It opened the door to a ton of technical settings that consumers just don”t have access to. While he was cruising the menus looking for “Reset Lamp Timer”, I saw things like “Main Picture Size” and “Secondary (PIP) Picture Size” that cried out “HACK THE TV!!”
It makes sense, of course, that a digital TV is highly configurable. But I”d never considered that there”s this secret world of configurations that I – the consumer – am not supposed to have access to. You can only get there through this special remote, so I quickly borrowed it from the guy and wrote down some info.
“LG ADJUST REMOCON” is what it”s called, model number 105-201M. Apparently this is a closely-guarded secret, as “105-201M” yields only 96 results at Google. Fortunately, the first result is a TV repairman shop where you can order one of these beauties. So hopefully in about a week or so I”ll be able to alter the secret world of my TV.
The Best Buy guy wasn”t too concerned about my desire to hack the LG. He probably noticed the Mac Mini hooked up to the TV, the two 250-gig external drives behind it and the Powerbook and PC laptop sitting around the living room and figured I”m a guy who plays around with technology. So when I wrote down the info from his remote, obviously I was going to try some things. He did, however, give me some advice – before I start messing with a setting, write down the existing value, otherwise I might kill the whole thing.
Fair enough.