By Klaus Jakobsen, developer of A Decent Remote This is the question where most remote apps quietly waste your time, so here is the answer up front: no app can control a non-smart TV by itself. Not ours, not anyone’s. Old TVs listen for infrared light, iPhones contain no IR transmitter, and no amount of software changes what hardware isn’t there. What follows is what actually works.
Why do remote apps only work on smart TVs?
A remote app sends commands over the network, so the TV must have two things: a network connection and software listening on it. Smart TVs have both. A 2009 flat panel has neither; its only input is an IR sensor waiting for light pulses in exactly the pattern its plastic remote produces. The app you install on the phone never gets a channel to speak on. If your TV is smart but simply off the network, that’s the happier problem covered in the no-Wi-Fi guide.
What is the cheapest way to make an old TV phone-controllable?
A streaming stick in the HDMI port, and it is not close. A basic Roku or Fire TV stick costs about what a takeaway dinner does, and it flips the situation completely:
- The stick joins your Wi-Fi and becomes the thing you actually control: apps, menus, search, playback.
- Your iPhone controls the stick with A Decent Remote: Roku sticks pair instantly, Fire TV sticks show a one-time approval prompt.
- Through HDMI-CEC, the stick reaches back into the TV itself: it powers the set on and off, switches it to the right input and adjusts volume. Your phone tells the stick, the stick tells the TV.
The net effect: the dumb TV becomes a monitor, the stick becomes the TV, and the phone becomes the remote for everything. As a bonus the old set gains current apps that its era never had.
What about IR blasters and smart hubs?
The direct-IR route exists and deserves one honest paragraph. A Wi-Fi-to-IR bridge (the BroadLink RM series is the usual pick) sits in line of sight of the TV and fires infrared codes when an app tells it to. It genuinely works, it can also run your air conditioner, and it is still the clunkier path for a TV: a second box to buy and power, a separate app to configure, and IR’s same-room, line-of-sight limits. Android phones with built-in IR blasters can do this natively, but that hardware never came to iPhone.
When is a replacement remote the right answer?
When the TV predates HDMI, or when all you ever do is change channels on cable. A universal IR remote from any supermarket handles a set like that for a few dollars, no network required. Everything newer than that: put a stick in it, and the phone remote comparison shows what daily driving looks like once the old panel is running modern software.
