control4 remote

The Apple TV remote itself drives me crazy, and both Apple and Control4 are abandoning people with older devices (pre-EA controllers), so I did the only sane thing I could do: I asked my dealer to switch my Control4 system back to using infrared for the Apple TV.

I used to have infrared control for my older 3rd-gen. Apple TV, prior to replacing it with the Apple TV 4K, for which we used network-based (i.e. IP-based) control from the C4 controller, as it is supposed to be "better" (on paper!). Needless to say, "better" these days is synonymous with MORE BUGS, as I now know from first-hand experience.

The Apple TV 4K DOES have an infrared sensor. It's on the left of the front:

Controlling the Apple TV 4K with the C4 controller via infrared works like a charm, with a few minor differences. (I now have to use the MENU button instead of the SELECT button to get out of the screen saver, and to wake the Apple TV from sleep. On the other hand, I can now again use the PLAY and PAUSE buttons as they were intended to be used, instead of the non-standard SELECT button for play/pause.)

So I am back to a single remote (the C4 remote) for everything, and it's a huge relief. (Using a continuous trackpad instead of cursor keys for basic incremental navigation is INSANE. These engineers are crazy.)

It is a sad state of affairs, but Apple keeps breaking things without warning, and developers and users are left to scramble for solutions. Maybe eventually the C4 developers will have a working solution for tvOS 13 for their more recent controllers. But they've made it quite clear that they will no longer provide updates for older controllers, like mine, which is stuck at C4's OS 2.

Mark my words: One day soon, Apple will release a new Apple TV model WITHOUT an infrared sensor ("courage"), and THEN we'll be completely stuck with buggy network-based controlling. For now, at least, the current Apple TV still has a working IR sensor.

On a side note, switching back to infrared also solved two other problems:

1) The most recent C4 driver for my controller for network-based control of the Apple TV would prevent the tvOS screen saver from kicking in. (That bug was introduced a few months back.) Now I no longer have this problem and the tvOS screen saver works fine again.

2) I also had never been able to let the Apple TV go to sleep because the remote pairing would get lost (even before the latest update). Now I no longer have this problem either, because infrared doesn't involve any kind of "remote pairing" (phew), and I can let the Apple TV go to sleep after a while. I just have to remember to use the MENU button to wake it up.

Hope this helps.

Looks like we're not alone:

https://www.c4forums.com/topic/31797-appletv-on-screen-display-osd-driver-tvos-13/

https://www.c4forums.com/topic/32349-appletv-13x-beta/

I fear the worst, i.e. older C4 hardware no longer supported, forcing us to purchase new gear just to regain lost functionality.

As long as your C4 controller not too far from the Apple TV, you can connect a cable with an IR transmitter to the controller and glue the transmitter to the Apple TV's IR sensor. Then your C4 dealer needs to configure your C4 controller to control the Apple TV via that IR connection.