Seiki 42" 4K SE42UGT Experience

[NoxTek]

My SE42UGT has started a disturbing habit of locking up with a blank screen (still lit, just black). When it does this it won't respond to any of the buttons on the unit or on the remote, except for pressing and holding the power button for 5 - 10 seconds will force it to power off. It's done this twice now. The first time I power cycled it and it got stuck at the 'SEIKI' power on logo for a number of seconds before powering itself off again. Hit the power button again and it powered up normally. That was about a week ago.

It just now did it again, and this time it got stuck at the power on logo TWICE - through two power cycles. I've got a sinking feeling here, folks....

 

[tungt88]

My SE42UGT has started a disturbing habit of locking up with a blank screen (still lit, just black). When it does this it won't respond to any of the buttons on the unit or on the remote, except for pressing and holding the power button for 5 - 10 seconds will force it to power off. It's done this twice now. The first time I power cycled it and it got stuck at the 'SEIKI' power on logo for a number of seconds before powering itself off again. Hit the power button again and it powered up normally. That was about a week ago.

It just now did it again, and this time it got stuck at the power on logo TWICE - through two power cycles. I've got a sinking feeling here, folks....

Sorry to hear that -- any chance you can return it to HH Gregg or Seiki for another unit/refund? I guess I've been very lucky with mine, so far (no issues whatsoever).

 

[franid]

I have almost related problem. My TV starts flickering after a while or after you turn it on either a cable connected or not. Any suggestion. It's within the 1year warranty but it cost over $80. to ship to ca. out of my pocket. Is it worth it?

 

[NoxTek]

Sorry to hear that -- any chance you can return it to HH Gregg or Seiki for another unit/refund? I guess I've been very lucky with mine, so far (no issues whatsoever).

Nah, I doubt HHGreg would accept a return six months after the original purchase, LOL! But oddly enough it hasn't done anything weird since I last posted about it back at the beginning of June. I'm pretty sure it was a loose connection or maybe dirty power or something. I'm about to put it up for sale on CL in favor of a 40" Wasabi Mango...

 

[ebolamonkey]

Sorry for the res guys but this is driving me nuts.

I'm doing diag over at Monitortests.com with ToastyX (author of CRU Resolution) and everything checks out fine but my display isn't doing 60hz. It is really frustrating and I still believe the manufacturer screwed me with a card that they claim is DP 1.2 but I think it is in fact a DP 1.0 card.

Here is my thread from over there:
https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU?pid=6350#pid6350

The only things left that I can think of are:

1. Cable? lol...
2. HDMI port (Are all of them HDMI 2.0 or just a certain one? Other forums indicate all three are HDMI 2.0 capable and mine is set to HDMI 2.0 on both TVs)
   
3. TV's running on Generic PnP drivers but that shouldn't do anything
4. CRU is running, all settings were correct and verified by ToastyX

No idea and I've been suffering on 30Hz on this thing for over a year now! Unacceptable!

 

[NoxTek]

Sorry for the res guys but this is driving me nuts.

I'm doing diag over at Monitortests.com with ToastyX (author of CRU Resolution) and everything checks out fine but my display isn't doing 60hz. It is really frustrating and I still believe the manufacturer screwed me with a card that they claim is DP 1.2 but I think it is in fact a DP 1.0 card.

Here is my thread from over there:
https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU?pid=6350#pid6350

The only things left that I can think of are:

1. Cable? lol...
2. HDMI port (Are all of them HDMI 2.0 or just a certain one? Other forums indicate all three are HDMI 2.0 capable and mine is set to HDMI 2.0 on both TVs)
   
3. TV's running on Generic PnP drivers but that shouldn't do anything
4. CRU is running, all settings were correct and verified by ToastyX

No idea and I've been suffering on 30Hz on this thing for over a year now! Unacceptable!

I'm kinda a zombie right now and headed for bed, so I didn't have much time to read that thread you linked to. But the thing that jumps to mind first is to ask if you have the SE42UGT in UHD Deep Color / HDMI 2.0 mode. I forget what it's called in the Seiki and it's in another bedroom in the house or I'd go look for you. But IIRC it's in the 'System' menu and not in the 'Display' menu. If you don't have it in HDMI 2.0 mode it will not send the proper EDID to your GPU to tell it that it supports 4K@60hz.

The Seiki UI has this annoying habit of disabling Game mode and HDMI 2.0 if you change certain display settings too, so you have to make sure it sticks.

 

[silent-circuit]

I'm kinda a zombie right now and headed for bed, so I didn't have much time to read that thread you linked to. But the thing that jumps to mind first is to ask if you have the SE42UGT in UHD Deep Color / HDMI 2.0 mode. I forget what it's called in the Seiki and it's in another bedroom in the house or I'd go look for you. But IIRC it's in the 'System' menu and not in the 'Display' menu. If you don't have it in HDMI 2.0 mode it will not send the proper EDID to your GPU to tell it that it supports 4K@60hz.

The Seiki UI has this annoying habit of disabling Game mode and HDMI 2.0 if you change certain display settings too, so you have to make sure it sticks.

... So you should just use the service menu. Hit "menu" then "00000"; once you figure out how to get around and where all the settings are in there you'll never use the horrible "GUI" again.

 

[NoxTek]

... So you should just use the service menu. Hit "menu" then "00000"; once you figure out how to get around and where all the settings are in there you'll never use the horrible "GUI" again.

Right, but seeing as you can completely brick or otherwise put your TV into an unrecoverable state if you don't know what you're doing, I never tell people about the service menu anymore unless they specifically ask. And it's not completely immune to the 'settings don't stick' bug either.

The service menu is, however, the only way to adjust the backlight on the SE42UGT which is monumentally stupid and a shame too since the backlight control is actually pretty nice.

 

[ebolamonkey]

Good stuff! Mine is on HDMI 2.0 for both TVs. Not sure about this UHD Deep Color stuff.

I think ToastyX gave up and started answering other questions, haha. I PMed him and he probably responded by now. Need to get to the bottom of this!

 

[tungt88]

Sorry for the res guys but this is driving me nuts.

I'm doing diag over at Monitortests.com with ToastyX (author of CRU Resolution) and everything checks out fine but my display isn't doing 60hz. It is really frustrating and I still believe the manufacturer screwed me with a card that they claim is DP 1.2 but I think it is in fact a DP 1.0 card.

Here is my thread from over there:
https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU?pid=6350#pid6350

The only things left that I can think of are:

1. Cable? lol...
2. HDMI port (Are all of them HDMI 2.0 or just a certain one? Other forums indicate all three are HDMI 2.0 capable and mine is set to HDMI 2.0 on both TVs)
   
3. TV's running on Generic PnP drivers but that shouldn't do anything
4. CRU is running, all settings were correct and verified by ToastyX

No idea and I've been suffering on 30Hz on this thing for over a year now! Unacceptable!

If I'm not mistaken, you need the DP 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 adapter (sold on Amazon). It's how you get 4K@60hz for your AMD card.

This is the one I got a little over a year ago: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0194F1MY4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (back when I had an AMD card).

Hope that helps!

 

[ebolamonkey]

If I'm not mistaken, you need the DP 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 adapter (sold on Amazon). It's how you get 4K@60hz for your AMD card.

This is the one I got a little over a year ago: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0194F1MY4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (back when I had an AMD card).

Hope that helps!

Have the Club3D that everyone else has. I'm not in a huge rush because at this point the sunk cost is 1 year+ of time and with the Nvidia 2080 on the Horizon, which will push down the prices of the 1070, I can wait patiently for the market to swing in my favor to hit the bid on a better hassle-free video card. Last time in my life I get AMD/ATI anything. A couple of pennies saves is NOT worth the insurmountable amount of headaches dealing with this lackluster combo. Intel and Nvidia from now on and forever! (Was a Voodoo fanboy back in the day and 3DFx got bought out by Nvidia to brain drain for the SLi technology of today... Ahhh, glorious days).

 

[leeleatherwood]

The 42" LCD SMART TV, 4K ULTRA HD, 60hz Model # SE42UMT firmware worked for my SE42UGT, serial numbers did not match but it worked. It also now reports as a SE42UMT.

File is CtvUpgrade_THTF_SY15225_SEIKI_CV6488_H_A_10_B1973_URSA9_20150814.bin , I got it from SoftPedia as SEIKI nolonger has firmware downloads on their website.

Your luck may vary, but for me it worked after somehow my firmware got damaged by electricity issues. (Only would boot to SEIKI logo and then cut off)

 

[J.C.]

There's something odd with my SE42UGT. The on/off button usually takes multiple tries to turn it on. Once on it works fine.

It's not a matter of not pressing it firmly or long enough, sometimes it just takes multiple attempts. Using the remote to turn it on works fine but I never use the remote, stowed in a drawer to decrease clutter.

I'm thinking it's something about the soft start circuit, not the button itself because it always turns OFF fine with one quick push of the same button, and the button feels firm and positive action/movement still, like these sort of buttons usually do when they work fine.

 

[J.C.]

Just had my SE42UGT fail. Was using it, observed horizontal wide black and white bands, about 2 dozen in total.

Ugh. Time to investigate. Grabbed some tools. This effin' thing has 7 different screw sizes.

Note that for my repair at least, you don't have to take the entire thing apart. The bulged area around the logic and PSU board comes off without taking the rest apart.

Taking that off, I observed one medium sized capacitor domed (failed) and two very little ones which are an atyptical failure on something like this, but they were all a generic "Chung" brand (or something like that).

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have close enough cap values in a HQ Panasonic low esr grade to complete the repair. Attached is a scan of the PSU PCB with the original cap values.

Replaced them with Panasonic FM's ('cuz it's what I had) and Bob's yer uncle. In particular the caps that were visibly domed were (as pictured) 470uf/25V, 220uF/10V, and 100uF/35V.

I went ahead and replaced 330uF 35V and 1000uF/10V for good measure. The 1000uF/10V were not great caps either but weren't the crap Chung brand.

I hope people find this post if theirs fails. I wouldn't have expected it but this is the most popular Google hit after youtube and amazon.