Remote control for LG +4

Believe it or not, between my husband and I, one of us lost the original remote to our bedroom television. So of course my husband ran out and bought a twenty dollar remote, Low and behod two nights later the remote fairy strikes and poof, the newly purchased remote is gone. After desperately searching for the new remote at the break of tears not wanting to get up in the middle of a Cold winter’s night to change the station or turn the TV off, I had one of those “I wonder if” moments and just as I’d wished,, I found this free iPhone app remote for our television. Before I could think “too good to be true, the remote app was up and running and we didn’t even have to pre-program codes, it is already pre-programmed !!

I lost my remote when moving and I tried 4 different remotes including the official LG one. This is the best of all and the ads are not as frequent or intrusive as the other apps with lower quality.
I like how it just has the image of the controller so it’s like you are just using a virtual controller as it should be.
Many apps will charge you up to $20 per year when the ad free version of this one is $3 permanently.
Note since this uses WiFi you still need an infrared remote to turn the TV on and wake it up using volume controls when it goes to sleep. If you have a universal remote you can just program it to LG to do this. (I use the direct tv remote that was programmed to this TV)

I might be missing something, but this app is a waste. In my case, the blu-ray player has to be on the same network as the app on the phone. Who dedicates an independent hardwired connection directly to the network for a legacy blu-ray player? That’s absurd. I’m not going to worry with that, going backwards 10 years just so I can then access it from my phone. I imagine doing what people really want from an app like this and the millions of pointless duplicates is hindered by protocols or something, but there’s got to be a better way. I want to connect it with HDMI and then be able to control the device from my phone and access it like any other components (sound bar, TV, AppleTV, cable, Roku). Is that not possible? Maybe not considering the concept of a truly universal smart phone remote app, though desperately wanted, seems to be unattainable though people keep downloading things like this which infer they do something similar in a technologically relevant way. They do not.