Do I have a Pooka in my house?

I recently moved my Brunswick Cortez phonograph, c. 1926 into my TV room, and was enjoying playing some records the other night. I should say that my Brunswick has a universal AC-DC motor to turn the turntable and has a simple automatic shut-off at the end. After playing several records, I noticed that when I started to play a record, my TV turned off! When the record shut off at the end, the TV came back on!!! It does this every time. The Cortez is not plugged into the same strip or wall as the TV. When I play my 1934 Victor 341 radio-phono, which is plugged in to the same strip as the Cortez, no such monkey business happens. I don't necessarily want to fix this problem, because it is a nice feature. So do I have a 6 foot 3 rabbit named Harvey in my house, or is there another explanation???

Do you by chance have one of those power strips that was sold to turn on certain peripherals when a computer was turned on?

No, it is just a regular power strip. A friend said it could be that the AC/DC motor just draws so many amps that the TV, which might be on the same circuit, is robbed of enough power to stay on. What really floors me is that the TV turns back on when the record finishes and the shut-off turns the motor off.

That doesn't make any sense at all. Electricity does not work that way. Anything that draws enough current to rob a TV of enough power to operate would also pop a fuse or circuit breaker in the power panel.

I can think of several possibilities, but they are all unlikely:

- The phonograph is somehow shaking something that causes a broken part in the TV to malfunction.

- The phonograph is putting out an ultrasonic frequency that activates a remote control receiver in the TV.

- Something is damaged in the power strip. Try replacing it.

- The TV set has a defective power supply circuit that fails to work if the voltage drops slightly.

- Someone has a remote control for the TV and is playing a trick on you.

- You got a computer control power strip by mistake (packaged wrong).

- There is damage or a wiring error in the house wiring. (Have an electrician check the neutral connections for high resistance. This happened to me after lightning struck the power pole with my service drop. They had to replace the meter socket to fix it.)

I used to have a Brunswick BR-260 with an electric motor turntable.

Forgive me for being so technically ignorant here. ...but someone told me a while back that these were extremely early electric motors produced by Brunswick and there was something about the way they were made. ...that they give off a very strong electromagnetic field perhaps? Perhaps current flow or something affected these early motors.

An example of what I am talking about... Here is my BR-260 playing a video on YouTube. Watch at around :20 seconds in when I go to turn on the turntable. You will here the camera picks up a very distinct electric distortion / disturbance that you do not hear in life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r6KEuOJKe4

I just had another thought.

There might have been brushes in the motor that arc. This could put strong surges back into the power line at multiples of the power line frequency. These surges might cause the flyback circuit in the power supply of a newer TV with a switching power supply to malfunction.

I have just seen this interference effect myself, so it does happen.

I was watching TV while I worked on an audio cable. I had my soldering iron plugged into an interrupting temperature control. This is a thermostat controlled device that periodically interrupts the power to the iron every 30 seconds or so. It has a dial that sets how long the power is interrupted each time. This control was plugged into the same power circuit the TV was plugged into.

While I was soldering the cable, I kept hearing a "POCK" sound coming from the TV. I thought the TV was failing, because the picture shook and shrunk each time I heard the "POCK" sound. I thought it was a high voltage leak in the flyback transformer (expensive to fix).

Then I noticed that the "POCK" was synchronized with the soldering iron current being interrupted. The neon light on the iron's base went off each time the "POCK" happened. I switched off the iron, and the TV stopped misbehaving.

New CRT TV sets have a switching power supply that runs at the horizontal sweep frequency. The spikes from the iron controller contacts opening cause the oscillator to quit oscillating for a fraction of a second. The continuous spikes from that old electric motor might shut down the oscillator altogether.

<<The phonograph is putting out an ultrasonic frequency that activates a remote control receiver in the TV.>>

This one popped into my head too, but then I am an old-TV collector/nut too. I 'd think it would have to be a relatively old TV to have an ultrasonic remote. All of the newer TVs work off of infrared light, I thought so anyway. How old is this TV that is shutting off and what model is it?