Swapping streaming remotes for fewer cord-cutting annoyances

It’s all too straightforward to miss the standard of the distant management when choosing a streaming gadget, as I’ve written earlier than.

You won’t notice it from the worth tag, as an illustration, however the $180 Apple TV 4K has one of many worst remotes in the marketplace. The slim design too simply slips between sofa cushions, and its trackpad-based controls have a steep studying curve. Conversely, the $29 Roku Express looks like an awesome worth till you notice that its distant lacks fundamental TV controls.

What’s a cord-cutter to do, then? If you’re caught with a nasty distant, contemplate a third-party substitute as a substitute of shopping for a completely new streaming gadget. Here are a pair choices I’ve provide you with:

Third-party IR remotes for Apple TV and Roku

My impetus for this little experiment was One For All’s URC 795 common streamer distant. A couple of weeks in the past, I noticed it on sale for $15 at Best Buy, down from the common $25, so I made a decision to see how it could work as a substitute distant for Apple TV and Roku gamers. (At the time this story was edited, Walmart was promoting a model of the URC 795 for $17, and eBay has open field ones for even much less.)

What drew me to the One for All distant was its design, which seems prefer it’s meant for streaming as a substitute of cable. The format of the directional pad and navigation buttons are much like that of a Roku distant, and there are not any quantity keys or different pointless cable distant muddle.

Jared Newman / IDG

Out of the field, the distant works with any Roku participant that helps infrared enter. Those embrace the high-end Roku Ultra and the finances Roku Express and Premiere fashions, however not the Roku Streaming Stick or Stick+. It may also management energy, quantity, and inputs on Samsung TVs by default.

To use the One for All distant with different gadgets, you need to enter particular button mixtures as outlined within the instruction guide. Pairing an Apple TV, as an illustration, requires holding down the streamer energy button and residential button, then letting go and holding down the TV energy button. It’s a clunky course of, however the upside is that you may program a streaming field, TV, and A/V gear to work concurrently. That means you possibly can consolidate remotes with out having to fiddle with HDMI-CEC.

With setup out of the best way, I used to be impressed with the distant total. While infrared is inherently much less responsive than the Bluetooth connections utilized by most streaming remotes, I didn’t have any points controlling my Apple TV 4K, even outdoors my dwelling workplace from 20 ft away. The rubberized buttons really feel snappy, and in contrast to with most streaming remotes, they’re backlit.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the pairing to work, though One for All lists Nvidia assist in its product listings and guide. That’s once I remembered listening to rumblings about how the Shield TV works with Amazon’s Fire TV remotes. With a few Fire TV Stick 4K gadgets readily available right here, I made a decision to test the combo out myself.

Jared Newman / IDG

To pair a Fire TV distant with the Shield, you will need to go to Settings > Remotes & Accessories > Add Bluetooth equipment, then maintain the Fire TV distant’s dwelling button for about 10 seconds till a light-weight begins blinking quickly on the high. At that time, a brand new gadget ought to seem within the Shield’s pairing menu, and you should use an current Shield distant to pick it.

Again, the pairing course of might have been smoother—I had to do this just a few instances earlier than it labored—however the Fire TV distant has labored flawlessly with the Nvidia Shield TV ever since. Because Amazon’s Fire TV working system is predicated on Android, the Shield acknowledged all of the distant’s buttons with out difficulty.

While some customers have reported issues previously with waking the Shield or utilizing voice instructions, I skilled no points with both, and was pleasantly…