Late to reply, but I find the IR blaster on my S5 Active to be indispensable. I travel a lot for work and I'm always finding myself in a different hotel room. I travel with an Amazon FireStick so I can watch what I want when i want and not be stuck with the hotel broadcasting. But there is a catch. Back when CRTs were all that was around, hotels used to lock out the back panels to keep you from hooking up DVD players, VCRs, game consoles etc. They wanted you to pay for their PPV programming. Most hotels now have flat panel TVs and don't really bother with locking out the inputs in the back anymore...however, a lot of hotel chains provide you with a remote that doesn't have a button to switch the input, or they have used some sort of software lock to disable it on the remotes or TVs. The FireStick (or Chromecast, Roku, etc) is useless if I can't switch inputs, so the universal programmable remote built right into my phone is a must have.