The Xbox One Media Remote

[Zappykins]

Normchacho said:

Zappykins said:

You clearly do not have a Kinect or an Xbox One.  It can sit just happy on top of the TV and control other media devices in the room. It's powerful, it doesn't need to be pointing at anything.  It's an IR Blaster.  It is quite powerful.

"Actually, an IR signal of sufficient strength will bounce off of walls just fine, and since the vast majority of homes do not have their entertainment gear stored away in a closet or otherwise inaccessible locations, this feature should be of use to a huge number of people, especially when using voice commands to change channels for instance."

http://www.technologytell.com/hometech/99243/kinect-2-ir-blaster/

You don't seem to understand how an IR remote works. In order for the remote to work the IR light from the remote needs to reach the reciever on the Kinect. So you could for instance be facing away from the TV and use the remote, because the light would bounce off of the wall and back towards the kinect. It would not however work if you were to go into another room with no line of sight for the IR light to bounce to the reciever. Which is the scenario that Selnor was talking about. You would need an RF remote for that.

We in some ways are talking about different things.  The IR Blaster doesn't need to be pointing at anything, but something in another room, yea, that's going to to see it.  Back to the flash analogy.  It the IR Blaster works much better than you think it would.  Point it at a wall, still turns on the TV when you say, "Xbox On."

But do we know how the remote is connecting to the Xbox One?  The Xbox One is controlling the other devices, but the remote could be using WiFi Direct or something else.  Do you have any stats on how it connects to the Xbox One/Kinect?