There's a middle ground between active self-destruction and passive wear and tear: Passive self-destruction. Plenty of devices become bricks once the manufacturer shuts down their servers (or refusing to service requests from older devices).

We don't know whether the TV suffers from planned obsolescence. It is still possible that it suffers from "bad luck" or (more relevant) from bad design without the intention to make it fail early. (Actually, we don't even know whether it is obsolescent, OP did not mention that they unsuccessfully tried to repair.)

Even the "active" part is a fuzzy thing. If the device looks at the calendar and actively destroys itself when a certain date is reached, it's definitely "active". However, what if the device just writes to eeprom or flash memory way more often than necessary, and it's calculated that the chip wears out from too much overwriting in exactly 3 years? Is it also an "active" destruction? The only thing which changed is the way time was measured: by the number of writing cycles instead of a different type of clock.

@vsz that would be up to the court to decide.

or what if the device doesn't actually destroy itself, but just requires a (not free) visit from an authorized service person to "repair" while said repair is a simple reset of some internal component?

How does the proposed law distinguish between "planned" obsolescence and "expected" obsolescence. E.g. a disk drive that wears out after N read/write cycles due to normal wear and tear. I guess the important thing is up-front disclosure?

@Barmar it is not a proposed law, it is a discussion abouit possible legislation. That is the very first step in drafting even a first proposal to make some law.

@Barmar Discussion in the Netherlands around this I heard was about making the act of planning obsolence illegal, rather than something that can be inspected on the product. Similar to e.g. price collusion, you can't definitively tell that two companies are colluding by looking at their prices, you need inside information (e.g. a whistleblower).

@DavidMulder however, planned obsolescence can be found by reverse engineering. For example, using soft plastic gears in a hand mixer that will, under normal use for more than a minute start to melt would be such a sign.

@Trish Something that breaks in the expected lifetime of a product always falls under warranty in the Netherlands. The only difference is that the first 2 years the manufacturer is responsible for proofing it wasn't them, whereas after 2 years you're responsible for proofing it wasn't you.

@DavidMulder Expected wear&tear is not covered by this unless the product wears out faster than could be reasonably expected for a product of that category.

Which is where the example of deliberately choosing low melt point gears comes in: the choice was so deliberate that it was to destroy the part.

@Trish which in the Netherlands would already be covered under warranty, even beyond 2 years, all you would have to show is that 1) the expected lifetime of a hand mixer is more than 2 years and 2) that the defect was due to the use of plastic parts which couldn't survive for the expected lifetime/plastic parts which aren't used in industry/etc (to be fair, this is how the law was written afaik, not necessarily enforced unless someone feels like getting into a lawsuit)

@DavidMulder please read the tag at the start of this answer. Germany. Germany uses a "2 years warrenty, 6-12 months the seller has to proove it's your fault, then you have to proove it" standard.

@Trish 🤦‍♂️ please read the conversation you engaged in. It started with me responding about a discussion in the Netherlands about how such a law could take shape.

@DavidMulder Please reread the Code of Conduct and the Be Nice policy

@vsz It will come down to finding a document that shows orders to calculate and implement the excessive writes to destroy the device. In absence of that, going to fall into a gray area.

Can a software product that is licensed for a given period of time legally cease to function when that time has expired?

@robertbristow-johnson different question, but yes, you can loose access the moment your license expires - you lease the software.

@Trish you wrote a comment that literally just said "please read the tag at the start" and then edited the comment to be less toxic and then when someone highlights that it was you who didn't pay attention you edit your comment and attack the person who pointed it out...