Regarding the location of (or supposed lack of) an IR receiver on the gen4 box, it is there, bottom right as you are looking at the front of the box. It is sandwiched in the slot between the faceplate and the bottom so the vertical angle from which you can point an IR remote is pretty terrible. I use a Harmony hub which was on a table across the room from my TV and surely blasted the whole wall since it had no trouble controlling the TV, AVR, AppleTV, BD player, and Xfinity gen3 box. Switched to the Gen4 box and it would not play nice (yes I disabled RF mode first). The only way to get the Gen4 box to respond to an IR remote was from the floor, basically 0* vertical angle to the box. Even putting the Harmony hub on the floor wouldn’t work. Suffice to say, they really want you to use only the voice remote, to the detriment of us with more than a TV, sound bar, and cable box in our living rooms. I finally got my Harmony hub to work by putting it on the shelf with my gear and adding an IR mini blaster routed up by the bottom of the TV. Again every component on the shelf was fine with the Harmony hub placement except for the Xfinity box. By pushing the hub out past the edge of the shelf, sliding the Gen4 box back a couple inches (and perching it up on top of 2 other components), AND increasing the “repeat time” on the hub (how many times it blasts the signal when a button is pressed on the Harmony remote), it began to work pretty reliably. Honestly, this should not be this hard.
... View more