IR blaster

Samsung includes a Bluetooth-powered IR blaster that allows the TV to directly control a cable box and/or Blu-ray/DVD player. The idea is to use voice and gesture commands, as well as the touch-pad remote, with these external devices. It's a nice idea, but when I tried it with a DirecTV HR24 satellite box and LG BD690 Blu-ray player, it didn't work nearly as well as third-party universal remotes like Harmony.

Setup was tedious (pairing the blaster to the TV via Bluetooth took forever; it took three tried to get the right channel lineup; the TV mistakenly said "source not connected" even though my player was plugged in), many direct commands (like a link to my DVR's reecorded programs) are unsupported and, worst of all, I had to use the balky Touch remote for everything which meant fiddling with on-screen menus instead of hitting buttons directly. There's also way to control an external audio device yet (so Volume and Mute affect only the TV) and power is not switched automatically. When I went from using the Blu-ray player to watching TV, the player remained turned on and spinning, whereas any decent universal remote automatically switches off devices that aren't in use.