Note: this is not a request for troubleshooting help.
For the past few years my 10ish year old “smart” TV will maybe once a week or so completely lose the ability to play sound in the Youtube app, and only in the Youtube app. Sound works just fine everywhere else. Bizarrely this is always triggered by an ad and never a video. Restarting the app doesn’t fix it, and neither does clearing the cache. Fortunately doing a full restart of the TV fixes it, it’s just irritating to have to restart because an ad somehow broke the sound.
What technological gremlins haunt you?
Do you have wake-on-lan enabled? Any setting that would wake on network activity? Could be you’re interrupting or amplifying a signal - Ethernet or WiFi - that is causing the OS to think it’s getting traffic.
No Wifi, as it simply doesn’t have a wifi adaptor.
Ethernet is a possibility. I tested it right now and removing the Ethernet cable doesn’t cause a wake-up, but I suppose it’s possible that slight interference if the cable were just slightly moved might cause it to register traffic plus a continued connection, enough to cause a wakeup. I’ll try tinkering with that, thanks!
It’s only a theory; if you don’t have wake-on-lan enabled, it’d probably not be even a consideration.