Sorry for not beeing clear. I removed the need for IR with the help of Kodi and HDMI/CEC control. You control Kodi from HASS (Wi-Fi) and Kodi control your AV & TV. Before this setup I used Harmoney controlled from HASS. This however requires your AV & TV to support HDMI and CEC but both of them can be found in appliances more than 10 years old so I imagine it wouldn’t be any problem. The Kodi would require a Rasp4 though.
Hope this clarifies. 
I have Node Red (NR) running on a Pi, and use that to help control/setup my Sony TV.
I have a flow in NR that runs every 3 secs, and checks to see if the Sony was turned on since the last check. If it sees the Sony was turned on, it also checks to see if the Denon receiver is on. If both are on, it sets up TV and receiver for the Denon to handle sound duties. If only the Sony is on, then it sets TV for internal speakers.
There is also a Denon library so I can also send commands to the Denon.
My interface with NR is through Alexa, I have it setup to understand commands so I can talk to my Dot and have NR respond.
Was a fair amount of work to setup NR for all this, but nice after its done.
The blasters internally and external are very powerful and do not require line of site. They will bounce off walls etc. But YMMV
I have my hub sitting under my tv and it is able to control my denon amp sitting in the cabinet two shelves down.
My second hub is in my home theater rack, I do use one external emitter for my xbox one but it is able to reach other devices on other shelves as well as my projector.
I do agree about the whole cloud setup thing though, it’s hokey at best. Logitech doesn’t really invest much in software development. But this is the best remote setup I have ever had so I tolerate it.
TBH, nothing beats physical keys on a remote (for quickly/blindly changing channels).
Used a pronto for many years (hard keys !), now have the harmony ultimate. I love it, though I do miss the programming capabilities of the Philips Pronto.
My Harmony hub is not pointed at the TV, but in the cupboard beneath it. IR signals bounce of the wall on the opposite site of the room. Never missed a beat.
You’ll be surprised about blindly changing channels with a non-button remote. I do it all the time with the remote page I built. It even responds faster in most cases than the remote because the remote is not always on the ‘correct page’. When it’s on device, you have to backtrack to activity where as the app doesn’t care.
Sorry, not having the ultimate but the one without the touchscreen. So the problem you describe is not applicable to me 
But you have to ‘unlock’ your phone tablet every time to press a button after the screen turns off ?
Anyway, whatever works 
Well, if you use face ID, it’s instant. So no issue there.
Yeah, that would make a huge difference, I’d probably still use the remote
Hi petro,
How did you do that ? I have an elite and i don’t know how it’s possible to do this kind of desgin. I have only the possibility of choosing command and assign it on an array of command.
What HA app do you use ? An offcial app or a non official ?
Thank you
Vodnok
He petro,
this looks really awesome.
Can you post your code for that please?
Thanks
Sorry to say, this code is extremely complicated and it uses a custom library I created that only works with my harmony remote in combination with a complicated custom integration called lovelace gen.
You can attempt to copy it from my configuration that’s in my profile.
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Also for the non-
-users there is device controls which can be directly accessed (from a locked state) by just holding the power button:
The companion app automagically makes everything available to your droid including every IR blaster connected to HA (I use a $3 esphome build for that 
)
As for the hardware remote we go with the good old xbox universal remote, very sturdy build, back light and actually features already two layers (if the TV button is pressed the buttons send different signals). All presses are captured by that esphome thingy and ether re-blasted to the (old) TV/Amp set or forwarded to HA which then will do the rest over the network (by issuing dedicated commands to devices).
In all this thing was less than $5 to build (because I got the remote for free 
) and will not be prone to fail just because a company decides too 
Besides we have a “remote” in lovelace actually - I think it’s never used
