I have Philips 42PFL6877K/12 tv. I recently built a pc and i want to connect it to my tv. But there's a problem. I have grounding issues. My tv doesn't have earth pin so it's not grounded. When i try to plug in hdmi cable it gives me little shock and it sparks when i try to connect to my pc. I am worrying about my new graphics card. Can i ground the end of the hdmi cable before plugging into my pc with a tiny wire? Or are there any other solutions? Why even they didn't put a earth pin in first place?
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Your TV has the shield from the antenna cable connected to its chassis ground, that's where the other potential reference comes in.
This is a bit cheaper to build than getting the ground reference through the power cable, and normally isn't an issue because most houses have cable amplifiers in the basement, which the shield of the cable is connected to.
If you have an amplifier in the basement and still have consistent voltage between the antenna shield and other ground references in the house, that is a sign that something is wrong with your electrical installation.
Otherwise, you can get a passive ground separator for coaxial cables to fix this, but it's no longer current practice for a reason and should be looked at by a professional.
Simon Richter
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This would be a good question to ee.stackexchange by they way.
Ungrounded devices with 2-prong mains plug are meant to "float" electrically and they have some leakage capacitance that gets charged to some potential via the mains plug. Sometimes this even happens due to filtering capacitors required to prevent EMI. The basic thing is, the TV is at whatever potential it has been connected via other connectors as well.
When connecting a floating device to a grounded device like a PC with 3-prong mains plug, the charge discharges and the potential between devices equalize. As the voltage difference could be approximately half of the mains voltage, you see a spark. If the ground connection between devices is intermittent while plugging the HDMI cable, it might blow up either one of the devices HDMI chips, if there is no protection to prevent that (ESD suppression diodes could be enough, or not).
Most likely there is a statement in the manual that says do not connect equipment unless they are unplugged from mains. Many 2-prong devices have this statement.
You might try to make a cable that only connects the ground pin to an unused RCA ground pin so that the TV is grounded.
Justme
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