4.5" does sound thick. I'm pretty sure the panel wasn't that thick. The stand was very tiny and crappy, so maybe with stand was 4.5" (although it says it's not).
From what I can remember, it was at least 2" thick but no more than 4".

I certainly would not expect this TV to have any kind of CEC control or discrete IR.
Also, it doesn't say it accepts 1080p as a signal in the specs. And that's something I didn't test for as HDMI wasn't even used.