How to get voice recognition working on LG TV

I'm enjoying our new LG television, which we got about two weeks ago. So far there's only been one glitch, and one annoyance.

The glitch was the voice recognition button on the remote for our OLED55C1PUB model stopping working, after it functioned fine initially. 

I kept getting the error message, "A temporary issue has occurred while attempting to connect to the server. Please try again later. (200)" But after later arrived, the voice recognition button still didn't work. 

A phone call to LG customer support led to a solution, though it took quite a while (three transfers) before I finally was able to talk to someone who deals with LG televisions. Not exactly the greatest support phone system.

After initially being told that it might be necessary to reset the remote, something I didn't want to do because it was difficult to pair the remote with our DirecTV system, I was given an easier procedure.

(1) Unplug the TV.
(2) Press the power button on the lower front center of the TV for 5 seconds.
(3) Plug in the TV.

Gee, I wonder why I couldn't think of that. So obvious... (not!)

That did the trick. Since, voice recognition has worked fine. 

By the way, it helps the customer support person if you have the correct model number for your TV The receipt we got from Video Only made a "1" look a lot like an "I," so I kept saying OLED55CI (as in eye) instead of OLED55C1 (as in one).

Unable to find our model, the support person eventually told me to press the mute button three times, which brings up a screen that has the model number and other useful info about the TV. Again, who knew?

The annoyance is how ads periodically appear on our LG TV. Not ads from a sponsor of a television program. Ads coming from businesses that must pay LG for the right to annoy people who just paid $1,500 for a new TV and now are forced to endure ads.

I poked around in Settings for a while tonight and may have found a way to turn off ads. I'll update this post if that approach worked. If it doesn't, I'll phone LG support and complain about ads appearing on our TV.

Comments

[R.G.]

We have a 2019 LG and found its faster to Google the problem since most likely everyone else has had the same problem. Here is some information on how to block advertising at the router:

https://techpenny.com/how-to-block-ads-on-a-smart-tvs/

I don't remember having to do this with ours so there might might be an easier option. Looks like a lot of discussion online about this problem with newer TV's.

[jerry]

4K?
Curved, mighty & 60%

J

[Amber]

THANK YOU SO MUCH OH MY GOD!!!!! Mine randomly did this after working perfectly fine for months, and your trick of turning it off and pushing the middle button worked great? Thank you for this I was losing my mind!

[Ralph]

Thank you for the details on voice recognition. Mine started working again with turning telly off from middle and back on.