Wednesday, August 03, 2016

Amazon Fire TV and generic remote?

To my surprise, I just happened to be press some button on my generic universal remote (my Philips universal remote in Panasonic TV mode) and the Fire TV responded.

The left, right, up, down, select buttons worked as well as the back button.  Couldn't find out an equivalent to the home button or the menu button though, so it's not a complete replacement.

It didn't work when I had the remote pointed away from the TV, so I thought this means that the Fire TV supports IR remotes.  But reading further, maybe it's controlling it via HDMI-CEC?  Not sure.

OK, let me try test it by pointing the remote directly at the Fire TV vs. the Panasonic TV.

But now that I'm trying it, the Fire TV doesn't respond.  It's like I was dreaming the whole thing.  Beats me.  Strange..

... later that day

OK, I wasn't dreaming.  It worked again as I was watching TV and switched the input to the Fire TV.  Apparently it is HDMI-CEC or at least it's not IR.  That's because I could control the Fire TV when pointing directly at the TV.  But not when I moved the Fire TV to the floor and pointed the remote directly at the Fire TV.

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