(To be clear, they still work today if you can get a second hand remote / hub.)
I will use Harmony for my home setup until it no longer functions.
The horrors I have seen related to CEC and ARC are something else.
I really REALLY want someone to manufacture the thin harmony RF remote with a simple receiver puck with an open firmware. That's all we'd need because the HA crowd would be all over it and have it doing anything you want.
And no matter what bizarro-world co-dependent cacophony of AV gear I manage to pile up together, any person can pick up the remote and watch TV or play a game or whatever.
I will be particularly unhappy when Logitech finally pulls the plug on Harmony servers.
At that point, I'll definitely need something different.
But IR codes are only part of the puzzle. And that is perhaps the easiest part to solve: We've already got lots of databases with IR-stuff available. There's databases focused on RC5, and the sleepy LIRC project, and some other things (all of which tend to be very Old Web in appearance).
License-permitting, it's simple enough to use this work as a foundation onto which newer codes can be placed.
That just leaves making the Harmony hardware interface work (hah, hahah -- and it's a dead-end anyway), or developing a new open-source remote to rule them all (which actually might not be too terrible of a task).
That all covers the first 90% of the problem.
The remaining 90% of the problem is just creating software that has a usable UI and actually works.
(I've tried updating the AppleTV, replugging the HDMI cable, unplugging the HDMI cable for <period of time>, etc. Nothing has worked. TV does not have any network which means it can't have had any nefarious updates.)
Once it's awake buttons presses on the LG remote are passed through to it but I have to keep the Apple remote around for that first step.
Sit down, press button on ATV remote or console controller. TV comes on.
I only needed it when it started complaining about software updates, but now with the AI version I took the TV offline and won't be updating it ever.