My Samsung TV has developed an unusual problem. The problem is intermittent, but it is becoming more frequent. At times, it makes it damn near impossible to watch TV at all. It should be noted, I am not on cable or dish, I have an antenna. And it never happens while watching DVDs. It should also be noted I have an another, older TV (CRT, with the antenna signal routed through a digital-to-analog converter) attached to the same antenna and it does not exhibit this problem. I think this rules out an antenna problem.

When watching TV, the receiver will suddenly turn itself off. Completely. Black screen. After a few moments, the TV will turn itself back on again, and continue functioning in a normal fashion. Sometimes it does this only once or twice, at other times it does it repeatedly, so much that watching TV becomes impossible.

No big deal. Just a minor short, probably brought about by overheating or a loose connection, right? We thought so too, but no. You see, this only happens when a commercial is running. The TV never turns itself off during the regular programming, ONLY when there is a commercial. In fact, in channels where there are no commercials, such as public TV, it never happens.

We are totally baffled, at first we thought maybe a suddenly different audio level during a commercial might trigger a response, but this seems to happen when the sound is turned off, or when we route it through an auxiliary external speaker. We also do not get the problem during loud audio on non-commercial programming, and sometimes we get it during quiet stretches on commercials. It does not seem to be related to audio levels. Perhaps some stations broadcast an additional signal during commercials for marketing or editing or routing purposes, and this inadvertently triggers the fault, but that is just speculation. Then again, perhaps it is related to abrupt changes in the compression algorithm when going from programming to commercials.

Apparently I am not the only person to experience this problem.

https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/samsung-tv-turns-itself-off-on-at-every-commercial-579621/

There are also numerous fixes to this problem on Youtube, but they are all totally different.

We are at a loss; every effort to troubleshoot this has gotten us nowhere. Any suggestions?