The remote does not respond to commands. Nothing in the Settings menu solves the problem. Battery? Electronic glitch? Some kind of overload?

I did work it out, thanks to the suggestion that my remote may have become paired with another device. My remote that was failing was in fact defective ( I had spilled something on it and that caused it to slowly malfunction) so I ordered a new remote through the Apple online store (don't ask how I managed this, it was not easy and now I have forgotten the exact steps)., When that remote arrived today I tried it. No success. Each time I hit enter or menu the Apple TV unit would blink three times but do nothing, so I could not access Settings and could not move among the program icons. I checked back with the support community and saw a suggestion that my remote may have become paired, etc. Of course, I thought, in all of my efforts to make the defective remote work, I had tried pairing it with my iPhone (without success); so I did the unpairing sequence (holding menu and left [rewind] buttons at the same time for 6 seconds) and, voila!, the light blinked once and all was right again.