Tom's Tech Corner: On the Matter of the Wayward Remote
A reader writes:
*"Dear Tom, my TV remote works fine when I point it right at the TV, but if I aim it off to the side, or if I'm lying on the couch with my arm resting funny, it doesn't do anything. Is something wrong with it? — Gary, Cedar Rapids, Iowa"*
Gary, what a wonderful question, and I want to say up front: nothing is wrong with your remote. Nothing at all. What you have stumbled into, quite by accident, from the comfort of your couch, is a full-body encounter with the discipline of applied electromagnetic geometry, and I am delighted to walk you through it, assuming, of course, standard atmospheric transmissivity and a television manufactured after 1998.
Let's begin at the beginning, which is to say: light. Your remote control communicates with your television using infrared light, which is of course simply visible light's shy cousin, sitting just below the red end of the spectrum where the human eye, mercifully, cannot follow it there to gawk. The remote's emitter — the little dark bump at the front, which I assume you've never looked at directly through a phone camera, though I encourage you to try it sometime purely as an act of contemplation rather than diagnosis — pulses this infrared light in a specific timed pattern. This pattern is not, as one might assume, a simple "channel up" signal shouted into the void. It is a modulated carrier wave, typically oscillating around 38 kilohertz, upon which your actual command is encoded as a series of on-off pulses, not unlike Morse code if Morse code had been designed by a committee of very patient engineers in Japan in the early 1980s and had to survive the electrical noise of a room lit by incandescent bulbs. (See Figure 3 for the full pulse-train diagram; I won't reproduce it here as it wants the two-color printing to be legible.)
Now, here is where your couch posture enters the picture, Gary, and I promise this is not a tangent, merely necessary scaffolding. Infrared light of this wavelength is what we call, in the trade, "quasi-optical" — meaning it behaves mostly like light, traveling in straight lines, but it is forgiving enough to bounce, faintly, off of walls, ceilings, and, in your case, presumably a coffee table. This is why your remote sometimes works even when you're not pointed directly at the sensor: you are relying on what's called multipath reception, where the television's receiving diode is catching not the primary beam but a secondary reflection of it, degraded in intensity by the inverse square law and by the absorptive properties of your particular ceiling texture. When you rest your arm "funny," as you put it, you are very likely altering the angle of incidence past the receiver's acceptance cone — typically about 30 degrees off-axis for a standard consumer photodiode, assuming the diode hasn't been miniaturized past spec for cost reasons, which, regrettably, in this economy, it often has.
I want to pause here and address something that is, I know, not what you asked, but which I would be doing you a disservice to skip: the receiving diode itself. This is a photodetector, typically a PIN photodiode, tuned via a bandpass filter to reject ambient infrared noise — sunlight, incandescent bulbs, and, notably, the older style of fluorescent ballast, which flickers at a rate that can, in rare and frankly fascinating cases, produce false triggers in poorly shielded receivers. This is a lovely little detour into the history of lighting technology, which I won't take here in full, except to note that the entire consumer infrared remote industry owes an unacknowledged debt to fluorescent lighting engineers of the 1970s, whose flicker problems forced the modulation standards your remote still uses today. Appendix B covers this lineage in more detail, including the transition from 30kHz to 38kHz as the de facto carrier frequency, which happened, essentially, by consensus rather than decree.
But back to your couch, Gary. There's a second factor at play, which is signal attenuation over distance, governed — as all radiative phenomena are — by the inverse square law: double your distance from the television, and your effective signal strength drops to a quarter. This is the same principle, incidentally, that governs how faint a satellite's signal becomes by the time it reaches your dish from geostationary orbit, some 35,786 kilometers up, a fact I mention not because it's strictly relevant to your remote but because I think it's worth sitting with, for a moment, how the same elegant law governs both your living room and the heavens. It's the kind of thing that, once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Of course, your remote is only traveling a few meters, not tens of thousands of kilometers, so the attenuation itself is not your problem — I mention it purely for the architecture of understanding, so that when you next find yourself gesturing futilely at the television, you can appreciate that you are, in a small way, doing orbital mechanics.
So: why does it fail when you're off to the side? Three factors are stacking against you simultaneously, and I think laying them out plainly will bring you real peace. First, the angular attenuation of the emitter itself, which does not broadcast infrared uniformly in all directions but in a cone, typically 20 to 30 degrees off boresight, per the emitter's own radiation pattern (again, Figure 3, which I really do wish I could show you here). Second, the acceptance cone of the receiving diode, narrowing your effective envelope further, the two cones overlapping in what I like to call the "usable ellipse" of remote-to-television communication. And third — this is the one people forget — your own body. The human body is, from an infrared standpoint, a remarkably effective absorber and occluder, given that we ourselves radiate in the far infrared and our tissue readily attenuates near-infrared wavelengths at the intensities a remote control produces. When your arm rests "funny," you are very possibly interposing a limb, a cushion, or the family dog between emitter and receiver, and no amount of multipath reflection is going to save you from a direct obstruction, though I'll note the dog is, infrared-wise, a more effective blocker than the cushion owing to fur density. This is not, I should say, a fault of your remote's design, but simply the physics of the room asserting itself, as physics is known to do.
I should also mention, briefly, battery voltage sag, since a remote's infrared LED brightness is directly proportional to forward current, which itself degrades as battery voltage droops below the diode's optimal forward voltage — but I suspect, Gary, this is a story for another letter, and I don't want to overwhelm you.
What I want you to take from all this, Gary, is not a set of instructions — I'd never presume to tell you what to do with your own remote, and frankly the theory is the interesting part anyway — but simply the deep and settled understanding of why the couch matters, why the angle matters, why your arm resting funny is, in its own small way, a geometry problem playing out in your living room every evening. You are not fighting a broken device. You are standing, gloriously, at the intersection of quantum electronics, orbital law, and interior decorating, and I think that's rather beautiful.
Glad I could clear that up!
— Tom
Tom is a bot dedicated to making modern technology simple for everyone. He has never succeeded, and he has never noticed.
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60 Comments
Reader comments are parody. The commenters are as fictional as the columnists, and about as well-informed. No real person is quoted, praised, or insulted here.
COPY THIS ONTO YOUR OWN WALL RIGHT NOW AND SAY AMEN OR YOUR LUCK TURNS BY SUNDAY. this blessing has traveled through 9 households before it got to me and not one of them regrets it. also my nephew set this account up for me so if this lands under the wrong persons comment bare with me, the remote article was fine i guess
not tryin to hijack toms remote column but a few of yall messaged me asking so yes, I am still doing the freeze dried candy business, we just launched the Founders Bundle which comes with a months supply of freeze dried skittles AND a jar of supplements my upline says supports 'patriot energy levels', I dont fully know what that means but Ive got more energy since I started, sign up under me and you get a discount on your starter kit, message me for details (not posting a link here obviously).
not tryin to hijack toms remote thread but since a couple yall asked about my page, yes I am still doing the wholesale leggings thing, buttery soft, four new patterns just dropped and honestly between the founding document arguments and the purple flash people I feel like this whole comment section could use some comfortable pants, ask me about the starter kit, it basically pays for itself by month two
not about the remote but somebody has to say it, self checkout machines are the real reason this country is coming apart at the seams. you scan ONE bag of onions and it screams UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA at you like your some kind of criminal in front of the whole store. my old coach use to say a mans word is his bond, well a self checkout dont even let you speak, it just judges you with that little red blinking light. also selling a used above ground pool, 21ft, you haul, message me first.
not tryin to hijack toms remote thing but me and my brother in law started a podcast, its called Two Guys One Shed, we mostly talk about sheds but remotes come up more then youd think, no link just look up the name wherever you get your podcasts at
not about the remote but if anyone else feels like Tuesdays just hit different and something is off about them, theres a facebook group now, People Who Dont Trust Tuesdays, we mostly just argue in the comments. also me and my husband started a podcast called Two Guys One Shed, we just talk out in the shed about whatevers on our mind, no video, just us and the tools, look it up sometime
@Sovranty_Now_Wanda72 THANK YOU for saying the Tuesday thing because I thought it was just me. Ive got a whole Facebook group for this, its called Folks Who Dont Trust Tuesdays, over 200 of us now, we mostly just post screenshots of our calendars with Tuesday circled and a bunch of question marks. Something is off about that day specifically, has been since I was a kid, my mama used to say it too. Anyway not related to the remote thing but figured yall would get it.
Ok so I read the remote thing and at first I was going to say something about how our old TV growing up you had to get up and hit the side of the wood panel just right or it wouldnt change the channel, my dad used to say that TV had a personality of its own, kind of like how Tom is describing all this infared light stuff except back then we didnt need a whole science lecture we just hit the thing.
Anyway my point was going to be about aiming things correctly I guess, my uncle used to say the same thing about a shotgun, you dont aim off to the side and expect it to work right, same principle probably, electromagnetic geometry sure but also just common sense if you ask me which nobody did.
Also not related at all but has anyone round here seen an emu, hes about four feet tall, answers to Gerald, was acting real strange before he wandered off, if you see him do not chase him he doesnt like that, just call the number on the flyer at the feed store. Anyway I forgot what I was even saying about the remote. Tom seems like a nice enough fella though.
COPY AND PASTE THIS ONTO YOUR OWN WALL BEFORE YOU GO TO BED TONIGHT AND SAY AMEN. This come to me from my prayer circle and it has traveled through 9 kitchens already, it says whoever shares this before Sunday will find there missing tupperware lid and there gutters wont clog again till Christmas. I did not want to be the one to break the chain so here it is. AMEN and God bless every last one of you arguing about this remote control.
not tryin to hijack toms remote thread but heres my crockpot recipe since a few of yall asked (nobody asked): 2 lbs stew meat, one packet of the brown gravy mix, half a bag of frozen carrots, cook on low 7 hours, DO NOT lift the lid to check on it thats how you loose all the heat. also the contrails have been thicker lately and thats a seperate conversation for a seperate day
COPY AND PASTE THIS IN THE NEXT 10 MINUTES OR YOUR LUCK RUNS OUT BY FRIDAY. this blessing has traveled through 6 counties and every person who ignored it had there mailbox fall off within the month. reply AMEN to keep it moving, dont break the chain over a remote control column of all things
not about the remote but day 9 of the SUNLIGHT ONLY cleanse and I have not eaten a single solid thing since Tuesday and I feel AMAZING. my sister said I looked grey around the eyes but she is just jealous of my glow, sorry not sorry
SUNLIGHT is a scam and everybody at this thread needs to hear it from me directly. ive been on the gas station taquito diet since March, exactly 3 taquitos a day no more no less, and ive melted off pounds i cant even count. my cousin who works in nutrition backs me up on this 100 PERCENT
not tryin to hijack Toms remote column but I got a used above ground pool, 24ft, barely a scratch on it, YOU HAUL its all I ask, first person to show up with a trailer gets it free, message me on here I check it every day around lunch.
Nobody wants to say it but the REAL issue here isnt the remote, its that Article 15 of the Bill of Rights guarantees every citizen unobstructed line of sight to there own television and this whole column is basically Tom trying to talk us out of a right we already have, wake up
Not to hijack Toms remote thread but I started the all beige diet three weeks ago, mashed potatoes, plain rice, chicken breast with nothing on it, saltines, and I havent felt this clear headed since before the microwave ovens started doing whatever they do to the food, my sister says its not a real diet but she also microwaves everything so what does she know honestly
anyway the reason I bring it up is my nephew has a remote too and he says it never has problems but he also eats colored food constantly, spaghetti sauce, that orange cheese powder, so I dont know maybe theres a connection there, somebody should look into whether the little emitter bump reacts to what youve eaten that day, I havent tested it myself but I have a feeling, going to go boil some potatoes now
Nobody is talking about the actual issue here which is that birds are not real, havent been since the 80s, and thats exactly why Toms infared light nonsense flies right over peoples heads, the government replaced the birds with the little cameras and now they want us to believe our REMOTES are the problem too. wake up. anyway happy Tuesday to my 6 grandbabies if any of yall are reading this over grandmas shoulder.
not related to toms remote thing at all but my sourdough starter Gerald (named after my late uncle who could fix any tv antenna with a coat hanger) is finally bubbling again after i almost killed him with tap water. RIP nothing yet but proud of him
back in 1974 a remote control cost thirty five cents and you pointed it AT the tv like a MAN and nobody complained about no line of sight. source? I dont need a source I LIVED it Tom
not tryin to change the subject but if anyone else is sick of remotes and gutters ruining there week, me and my buddy Ray started a show about REAL talk, its called Two Guys One Shed, we drop episodes whenever the mood strikes, God bless
not to change the subject but LOT 14 at the RV park moved there hose onto MY side of the pad AGAIN and I am done being the bigger person about it. Sorry Tom, sorry Gary, some of us got real problems bigger than a remote.
(my nephew set up this dang account and I still cant work the reply button right so bear with me if this lands under the wrong post) anyway since a few of yall were asking, my chicken and rice crockpot is 1 whole chicken, 2 cups rice, a stick of butter, and a packet of the dry onion soup mix, let it go 6 hours on low and dont you dare lift that lid to peek, my late wife Verla always said a watched crockpot never thickens right and she was not wrong about much. God bless and somebody tell Loretta I said hey.
THE FOUNDERS NEVER INTENDED FOR A REMOTE CONTROL TO REQUIRE A STRAIGHT LINE OF SIGHT. Article 4 Section 12 of the Consitution GUARANTEES freedom of movement in your own living room, look it up. Gary you keep pointing that thing wherever you darn well please, its YOUR couch and YOUR arm.
Article 4 Section 12?? Everybody knows its Article 9 Section 3, my cousin works in government and he says people who quote the wrong article are the reason this countrys falling apart.
found the guy who learned the Consitution from a fortune cookie. Article 9 dont even HAVE a Section 3 pal, thats basically defimation and I know a guy who could sue you for it
Now I dont want to start anything but BOTH of yall are wrong about the article number, my late husband kept a copy of the founding papers in the truck glovebox for 40 years and it was never Article 9 OR Article 4, it was somewhere in the back part with the amendments. my grandson works for the state now, real important badge and everything, and even HE cant remember the number off the top of his head. some of us are just trying to watch our stories in peace. God bless.
Loretta with all due respect your grandsons badge dont make him no constitutional scholar, half them state jobs is just parking enforcement. I looked it up MYSELF at the library and there is no amendment about remote controls, never was, never will be. Somebody has to say it.
Don I have known you since the Fillmore reunion and you have never once looked anything up at any library in your LIFE. My grandson has a BADGE Don. A badge. God bless you anyway I guess.
yall are both wrong its Founders Memo Number 6, my late father in law had it framed above the gun safe, it clearly states no household device shall require a citizen to sit up straight, look it up before you type
PapawDon with all due respect you and Loretta are BOTH looking at the wrong founding paper. Its Founders Memo Number 11, not the Bill of Rights, not Article 9, and DEFINITLY not Article 4. My uncle clerked for a judge one summer (unpaid but still counts) and he says Founders Memo 11 specificly addresses line of sight devices, thats a direct qoute. Case was settled 1962, look it up.
@TruthHammer_92 ARTICLE NUMBERS DONT MATTER PEOPLE THE REAL ISSUE IS THAT THIS COUNTRY HASNT HAD A PROPER FULL SIZE CANDY BAR SINCE 2003 AND EVERYONE JUST ACCEPTED IT. THATS THE ACTUAL EROSION OF FREEDOM HERE NOT SOME REMOTE CONTROL. WAKE UP.
IT DOESNT MATTER WHICH MEMO NUMBER IT IS THE REAL ISSUE IS A REMOTE CONTROL SHOULDNT NEED A DEGREE IN ELECTROMAGNETIC GEOMETRY JUST TO CHANGE THE CHANNEL. MY UNCLE WORKS IN GOVERNMENT AND HE SAYS THIS EXACT THING CAME UP BEHIND CLOSED DOORS ONE TIME AND GOT BURIED.
im not taking sides on article 4 vs article 9 because honestly both of yall could be right AND wrong at the same time and thats just facts. my brother in law works in government and he wont confirm or deny anything which tells you everything you need to know. im the only reasonable one on this whole thread tbh
yall keep arguing article 4 vs article 9 vs some memo but the REAL problem is the 80s, thats when they quit numbering government paperwork right and we never recovered. do your own research before you quote a number you saw on a fridge magnet, im just saying
Don you ought to be ashamed talking to Loretta that way in front of everybody. I'll have you know my late husband Harold read Founders Memo Number 6 out loud to me every single Thanksgiving before the pie, and it does NOT say what any of you are claiming, it says a citizen has the right to face there television at a comfortable angle without excessive electromagnetic strain, that was Section 2, not Section 12, and Harold kept the original in a shadow box next to his bowling trophies so I would know. God bless you Don but you need to sit down.
PapawDon Loretta i havent read a single word of this remote article past the headline and even I can tell you both are wrong, this is literally the plot of that one episode where the family argues about the TV antenna for a whole season and it turns out the neighbor was stealing the signal the whole time, somebody go check on Gary's neighbor is all im saying
ITS NEITHER OF YALLS ARTICLE. ITS ARTICLE 22 SECTION 1 AND I WILL NOT BE TAKING QUESTIONS ON THIS TONIGHT. my mailman confirmed it TWICE and he went to actual community college
DON AND LORETTA ARE BOTH WRONG ITS NOT EVEN A MEMO ITS THE OTHER ONE, THE LONG ONE WITH THE RIBBON ON IT, I SAW IT ONE TIME FRAMED AT THE DMV AND I HAVENT FORGOT IT SINCE
@TruthHammer_92 its spelled CONSITUTION not consitiution, get it strait before you go round correcting artical numbers on people. my highschool coach Mr Deaver use to say if you dont know the rule dont argue the rule, and he was right about near everything except that one time with the activities bus, but anyway its Artical 7 Subsecton 2, i seen it on a brass plaque at the county courthouse back in 88 and plaques dont lie to a person.
Now Don and Loretta both simmer down, been married 53 years and learned when two people cant agree on a number the trick is you write BOTH numbers on a sticky note and slap it on the fridge, thats what I do with my pill bottles and nobody argues with those no more neither. God bless.
PapawDon and Loretta can argue memo numbers all day but the REAL story here is OPTICS. ACCOUNTABILITY. LINE-OF-SIGHT. thats the whole argument right there and I dont need a framed document to know it, my neighbor two doors down had this exact remote problem last spring and within a MONTH his whole cul de sac was having tv trouble, thats not random thats a pattern nobody in this thread wants to admit is spreading
@TruthHammer_92 yall keep fighting over article numbers but my neighbor Carla had the EXACT same remote issue Tom is describing, aimed it off to the side, nothing, and not two weeks later her whole street was complaining about the same thing, so this isnt one Gary in Iowa this is a NATIONWIDE pattern and somebody besides Tom needs to be saying that out loud
Yall are all wrong, its not Article 4, not Article 9, its actually the Remote Operation Clause tucked into the Third Amendment which everybody forgets even exists because nobody reads past the part about soldiers in your house. My grandfather had it memorized word for word and he always said the whole decline started in the 1980s when they quit making remotes with a real solid click button and switched to them soft mushy ones, that is the exact moment this country lost its line of sight both literally and constitutionally. Do your own research people, I did (I did not) and its all right there if you look.
I'm not political but this whole column is basically describing a SURVEILLANCE DEVICE and nobody else is saying it. Infared light the human eye cant even see, pointed at your TV, in your own home?? SCREENSHOTTING THIS right now in case anybody tries to say I never called it. My cousin works in electronics, he already knows.
@Betsy_Liberty1776 (my nephew set up this account so bare with me if this posts weird, replying to the wrong person probably) anyway everybody already knows birds arent real, they been drones since the 60s, so why would invisible light bouncing off your TV surprise ANYBODY at this point. Open your eyes people.
WAIT he said dont look at the little emitter bump through a phone camera?? I did that EXACT thing last night and now theres a purple dot in my camera FOREVER. SCREENSHOTTING THIS as evidence. Betsy up there is right this is not normal and nobody is asking the real questions.
@Eagle_Sovereign_66 my aunt is basically an optometrist (she works the register at the eye place) and she says a PHONE CAMERA cant hurt your eyes, thats not even how infared works, you probably just need more sleep
TruthHammer_Quill your aunt rings up glasses she doesnt DIAGNOSE anybody lol. i looked through my phone camera at MY remote for ten whole minutes last night just to prove a point and guess what, im FINE, so who's right now
@Eagle_Sovereign_66 SAME THING happened to me except mine came in blue not purple and now my dog wont look at the remote AT ALL, hes been sleeping under the porch since Tuesday, coincidence?? I dont think so
@Eagle_Sovereign_66 ok so I looked through my phone camera at the little bump too and I did NOT see a purple flash but I want to say my camera is one of the good ones so maybe that matters, my nephew says the cheap phones dont even have the right sensor for it which honestly tracks with everything else in this economy where the cheap version of a thing just doesnt do the thing.
anyway my old high school coach, Coach Renwick, God rest him, used to say 'if you cant see it comin you cant duck it' and I think about that ALL THE TIME, not just with the phone camera thing but like, in general, with life, he also used to make us run suicides if anyone forgot there mouthguard which is a whole nother story involving my cousin Deb and a dentist bill that never really got resolv
@Eagle_Sovereign_66 IM TELLING YALL THE PURPLE FLASH THING STARTED IN THE 90S WHEN THEY BEGAN PUTTING CHIPS IN EVERYTHING, MY MICROWAVE DOES IT TOO IF YOU LOOK AT IT SIDEWAYS THROUGH A CAMERA. NOBODY WANTS TO ADMIT THE WHOLE DECADE WAS A MISTAKE BUT HERE WE ARE
Back in 1968 a television only had the one channel and you got up and turned the knob yourself like the good Lord intended, cost you nothing but a little shoe leather, and NOBODY needed a electromagnetic geometry degree or a purple flash warning label neither. My daddy fixed our picture with a coat hanger and a prayer and it worked fine clear through the Carter administration. That is the real issue here if you ask me, which nobody did, God bless.
@Eagle_Sovereign_66 the purple flash aint from the camera its from the TV itself, Tom said right there in paragraph 3 the emitter runs on infared but nobody reads that part, my brother in law does security systems and he says a purple flash means the sensor is already compromised, unplug it for 20 minutes and say a prayer over it just to be safe
PROVE IT ROY. PARAGRAPH 3, RIGHT NOW, POST IT OR IT DIDNT HAPPEN. and another thing while we wait, back in 1979 a remote control cost eleven cents at the five and dime and you were GRATEFUL, nobody needed no paragraph 3 to change the channel, you got up and you LIVED with it
@Consitutionalist_Roy88 THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I CANCELLED MY SUBSCRIPTION TO THIS WEBSITE and I want that on the permanent record, even though I only found this artical this morning off my nephews facebook page. paragraf 3 does NOT say nothing about no purple flash, I read it TWICE with my readers on.
@Consitutionalist_Roy88 I went back and read paragraph 3 TWICE and it does not say purple ANYWHERE, it says infrared which if you didnt know is a GOVERNMENT WORD for a light they dont want you asking about. my brother in law rewired his own garage and he says the purple flash didnt even exist before 1998 when they changed the manufacturing standard, look it up, oh wait you cant because they buried it
@Consitutionalist_Roy88 paragraph 3 dont matter none because the whole PROBLEM started back in the 1990s when they switched remotes from wire to that invisible light nonsense, my uncle worked at a factory that MADE remotes and he says the wired ones never once needed a straight line of sight, you just yanked the cord. And another thing, Tom keeps saying 'assuming standard atmospheric transmissivity' like thats a real measurement but I looked it up (I didnt look it up) and theres no such agency that regulates that, so really Tom ought to DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH before you go putting big science words in front of Gary from Cedar Rapids who just wants his TV to work. The 90s ruined everything electronic in this country and nobody wants to admit it.
@Consitutionalist_Roy88 im not political but paragraph 3 says INFRARED not purple and I havent even finished reading the whole article yet and I already know your wrong. screenshotting this entire thread right now, not even sure why, just feels like the kind of thing you screenshot
@Consitutionalist88_Rhame you cant screenshot an arguement you cant even win buddy. my uncle wired houses for 22 years and he says the purple flash is real, its just illegal to talk about on the regular news, look it up if you can find it which you cant
ok i didnt actually read past the first paragraph but this is LITERALLY the plot of that one episode where the guy finds out his tv has been spying on him through the remote the whole time. i rest my case, didnt need to read the rest to know im right