I've got the Harmony Elite remote control with a hub. I know that IR commands are sent from the hub to various devices like my Denon AVR, my TiVo box, and my blu-ray player. But I also have a Fire TV box and a Sony KD-65X85K TV that don't receive IR commands. I think the Fire TV uses bluetooth and the Sony TV uses RF.

I don't know if bluetooth is also RF, but that probably doesn't matter.

My question is this. When I use my remote to control the TV, what is happening with the RF signals? Are they sent to the TV from the hub? How is my home WiFi involved in this process? And are RF signals being sent from my remote to the hub and then to the TV?

I'm confused. Can anyone help me?

Better late reply than never. This subforum is mostly dead, unfortunately. The remote can only do IR from its end, the hub can control devices via IR (either via hard wired or its built in blasters), and IP control (for select devices like Sony TVs and Rokus).

RF and Bluetooth are not the same protocol, and unfortunately, the harmony can't learn or send RF commands. The hub can connect and control some devices via bluetooth as well (windows pcs for example), but not many. The remote shows up as a bluetooth keyboard if you try to pair it with most devices.

Right now if your hub or remote has line of sight to your TV, it's probably being controlled wirelessly via IR command signals. However, if your Sony TV supports IP control, when you were setting up your Harmony to work with your TV it might have been set to control via IP (you'd know because Harmony would have asked you to connect your tv to your internet so that it could find it when you added your TV as a new device). Unfortunately, IP control for Sony TVs via the harmony is laggy, and you'll likely encounter double presses as well as the inability to turn on the tv or do long presses on the buttons.

Sine your FireTV box is a supported bluetooth device, my guess is your harmony is controlling it via bluetooth and your Sony Tv is being controlled via IR or IP.

Yes. Thank you.


Yes, that's the way it pairs with my old fire tv box.


It does use IR to control most of the devices, but not the TV or the fire tv. I reached this conclusion by blocking the line of sight between the hub and the devices, and testing to see if the device responded to controls from the elite remote.


I did have to connect the TV to the internet during setup, but I don't recall if Harmony asked me to do it. I also had to enter a 4-digit code that appeared on the TV screen, and there was a message stating that if I didn't enter the code the TV would be controlled by IR only. (I think it also said that if I did enter the 4-digit code it would be controlled by RF, but I don't really remember.) I had some trouble and had to reset the TV and repeat the connection to the harmony several times. Sometimes the 4-digit code appeared along with the message, and sometimes it didn't. If the code didn't appear or if I didn't enter it, then I had IR control only. If I set it up with IR control then only the power button would work, so I set it up using the 4-digit code. On the OEM the power toggle button is IR, but all the other buttons aren't (they don't require a line of sight to work).

I don't know what IP is, internet protocol? When I use the elite remote it is laggy and often unresponsive when controlling the TV, and the power control is especially unreliable. The full story is in this thread: [Link: remotecentral.com]

The weird thing is that if I use the smart phone app, control of the TV is flawless. But I prefer a tactile remote.