I have a brand new small soundbar that I love - however I am beating my head against the wall trying to get the apple tv to learn the remote. Context and steps:
-- the speaker is plugged in to the tv via optical cable
-- sound is playing through the speaker via the tv (with apple tv in the mix)
-- i cannot control the sound with the apple tv remote -- when I ask apple tv to learn remote, it either doesn't detect anything at all when i press volume up on the bose remote, or sometimes starts to progress and stops over and over again
-- I've tried everything I've found on the internet
-- I also cannot connect the bose music app if that is something that could be helpful
How frustrating for the quality of this product to be so good and the user experience a complete disaster. Please help!
Sorry to hear of your experience, I can understand your frustrations. We'd love to do what we can to help and appreciate you providing us with the information you have given us so far.
You can find instructions for controlling your Soundbar to your Apple TV remote via this third party link. The TV speaker is Infra-red based so setup is performed via the Apple TV settings menus. On the link, read section: "Program your remote for volume".
Please ensure the soundbar has good line of sight with the Apple TV remote.
-- I go through the proper steps on the apple tv side and get to the screen where it asks me to press the UP volume on the bose remote -- Doing that either does NOTHING or it starts briefly, starts to show progress and restarts a couple of times and then just quits -- I've tried moving the apple tv - putting it in front of the soundbar, behind, above, to the side - nothing has any effect -- No other button on the bose remote does anything different
Comments removed from my post by the moderator were simply that I am about to return this product as this process has been so frustrating, I am still unable to use the product as expected, and the support response here is to send me to other websites online without reading the content of my posts. Is this really the Bose style of customer service?
I have personally got both the TV speaker and an Apple TV so in my downtime I was able to test this myself. I was also unable to set the Apple TV remote up to control the speaker via the standard remote setup menu on the Apple TV. Universal remotes may or may not have codes to control or fully control all devices so it's possible the Apple TV just doesn't support our soundbar.
There is another method you can use (see this link) where you can program the TV speaker's remote to understand commands issued by other remotes, however, it appears that because the Apple TV does not feature a MUTE button, it is unable to complete the pairing process.
In conclusion, I ultimately got the Apple TV remote to work by doing this:
1. I used the instructions in the link above to control the soundbar via the volume controls on my TV remote 2. I edited the remote settings for the Apple TV to "TV via IR" to do this:
Open Settings
Remote and Devices
Volume Control
Select "TV via IR"
By changing the remote setting on the Apple TV to control "TV via IR" any TV volume commands that were assigned at the beginning are the same as that of the TV, thus bringing the desired controls to the Apple remote.