Google assistant does not connect to my new TV


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I have just bought a new TV (LG OLED 48cx -= WEB OS 5). The sound output from the TV to the Sonos Arc works fine, but the google assistant won’t budge from trying to turn on the old Android TV box instead of interacting with the new TV.

 

Old setup: antenna->Android TV with coax->TV with HDMI->Sonos Arc with TOSLINK to HDMI adapter (the Arc port on the the old TV was fried). With that setup, the Google assistant was able to turn the android TV on/off

 

New setup: antenna→ LG TV with coax → Sonos Arc with HDMI through eArc port. The sound output works fine but the google assistant says “the living room TV is not available” when trying to gt it to urn the TV on/off.

This morning I connected the android TV to the old TV upstairs to watch the Euro2020. The Android box is connected over wifi to the modem and with HDMI to the old TV, and when I asked the google assistant to turn the TV on, it switched the android box on over the network…

I tried to uninstall it and reinstall + let it connect to the TV and still the same result.

Any guidance on how to reset the google assistant to connect and command the new LG TV would be much appreciated.. 

 


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10 replies

‘Magnetic field’ seems a good possibility to me - so maybe it’s that?
I’m not quite sure how the device touch-controls work to switch these things on/off or activate the mic? I just recall for one user, that a slight shift of his Arc in relation to the TV sorted it for him, so fingers-x’d🤞it works in your case too.

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“strangely” is the right word my friend, microphones usually get activated by sounds more than by light, but at this stage, I’m willing to try anything lol

jokes aside, the bar is incidentally slightly further away from the TV now and I haven’t had the dip in a a few days, so who knows, maybe some waves/magnetic fields make the assistant “hear things”… and on some TVs, the source of those waves may be closer to the microphone of the Sonos… just rubbing my crystal ball here but who knows...

I did see a user on the forum here who had a similar issue to yourself and it turned out to be a case that their Arc/Playbar was just in the wrong place in relation to their TV and the light emitting from the screen was ‘strangely’ causing their mic to frequently activate. They solved it by slightly moving their Arc away from the TV - I think they simply moved it forward (or backwards?) a few millimetres and it fixed it.

So maybe see if that works for you.🤞

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oh, and the sound dips I used to have with the Sony TV, I have them with the LG TV too, and every single time, the 3 LED’s indicating that Google Assistant is listening are on, it’s like Google thinks someone is talking to him but nobody is. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I am convinced that the sound dip has something to do with the Google assistant, not with any particular brand of TV.

The audio usually dips on hearing the "wake word", so that the voice instruction can be heard. You can check your history to see what was heard by the assistant.

I would perhaps check through your online Google account settings and their Home/Assistant Apps to remove your earlier hardware links. Then hopefully that will resolve your issue.

If you still have access to your old TV, you can probably also fire that back ]up temporarily and remove your Google credentials/account linking that way too, I suspect.

Hi Ken,

Thanks for pointing me to that history  - I found it under “My activity” after clicking on the G badge in the top right corner of the Google Home App.

I have plenty of “unknown voice command” in my activity, it seems that those are instances where the assistant thought you were saying something but you weren’t. Google is supposed to (anonymously) review these recordings to refine the assistant (https://www.whatthetech.tv/voice-assistants-are-always-listening-should-you-be-worried/), sadly, there is no option to listen to the actual recording to give me a hint about what sound was interpreted as a wake word.

 

There isn’t much that can be done about it other than muting the assistant on the Sonos bar during a movie or whatever you are watching if you don’t want to risk those sounds dips.

 

One thing that seems to come out of this experience is that it doesn’t only affect Sony TVs, or even Sony TV’s more than others, it is a general problem with the assistant waking due to some sound coming out of the Sonos bar that vaguely resembles or includes the wake words.

 

 

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This was a pain in the neck to resolve, but I am now one step further: The LG TV requires that you set the name of the device in Support-TV Information-Device name to room+TV, e.g. Living Room TV for an assistant to be able to turn the TV on and off. The old Android TV box has the same name so I changed it to something else. So now I can turn the TV on an off using the Sonos bar’s assistant.

I unlinked the ThinQ app from Google and I am using the Sonos TV Control “device” to control the TV.

The new problem that has come to the surface is that if I ask Google to “play octonauts on Youtube” it still plays it on the Android box because the LG TV does not have Chromecast (or at least it is not enabled), hence it plays on the only device that it knows has Chromecast on my network. I am yet to find out how to activate Chromecast on that WebOS TV.… I saw a reference to Smart Share which is supposed to do just that, but I can’t find it in the home page. Dolor de cabeza… 

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I honestly can’t imagine a character saying “OK or Hey Google” in a movie, but who knows, there might be other wake words I am not aware of. I’ll check the history, thanks for the tip!

 

OK, I’ll try to sign out of the Android TV device (Vodafone TV) to see it that makes a difference.

The old TV was very old (9-10 years), so it didn’t have any apps other than proprietary ones of Sony + very rudimentary (unusable) web browsing.

Thanks for your inputs, much appreciated.

Gaetano.

oh, and the sound dips I used to have with the Sony TV, I have them with the LG TV too, and every single time, the 3 LED’s indicating that Google Assistant is listening are on, it’s like Google thinks someone is talking to him but nobody is. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I am convinced that the sound dip has something to do with the Google assistant, not with any particular brand of TV.

The audio usually dips on hearing the "wake word", so that the voice instruction can be heard. You can check your history to see what was heard by the assistant.

I would perhaps check through your online Google account settings and their Home/Assistant Apps to remove your earlier hardware links. Then hopefully that will resolve your issue.

If you still have access to your old TV, you can probably also fire that back ]up temporarily and remove your Google credentials/account linking that way too, I suspect.

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oh, and the sound dips I used to have with the Sony TV, I have them with the LG TV too, and every single time, the 3 LED’s indicating that Google Assistant is listening are on, it’s like Google thinks someone is talking to him but nobody is. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I am convinced that the sound dip has something to do with the Google assistant, not with any particular brand of TV.

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I tried but there is no option to. I think that because I am logged in with my Google account, it is there by default. I couldn’t find a way to rename it, but I’ll look again.

 

I did create an account with LG and did link it to the google assistant. I can turn the TV on, but cannot turn it off. Thanks for your advice. I will try again. This is way more complicated that it should be...

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Hi @Gaetanodd

Thanks for your post!

I would assume you’ll need to remove the Android box from your Google Home app, or at least rename it. You can do this by selecting it, then tap the Settings icon at the top-right, and select Remove Device.

I would then assume you’ll need to create an account with LG and sign in to it on the Google Home app. Your TV or it’s manual should have instructions for how to do this, and I would assume it involves downloading an LG app at some point, or signing the TV into your Google account.

I hope this helps.