I had a very similar story related to this as well.

For the longest time I always assumed RF remotes were the ancient ones, as growing up, we had an old large Magnavox console tv, with just such a remote. As time progressed we went to IR, which was, as I'll explain below, a welcome relief!

The tv was positioned in a basement room, just under my bedroom. Every few months I would be rustled from my sleep, at 4AM, to come downstairs to the tv turned on, blaring full volume and on channel 99 (static). This continued for a while until I realized that my father, who is HAM operator, and an early riser, would somehow be injecting into the remote sensor on certain frequencies occasionally. Needless to say it was thusly unplugged afterwards!

What a story. Be friendly to your neighbors, otherwise they might turn off your TV!

When I was living in Berlin, the entire apartment complex had a WhatsApp group and people would (of course it's Berlin) party a lot. People would ask each other to turn down the volume, which worked for the most part - at least for severe partying. Best messages were like "you've been partying all night, it's 2pm, I need some silence to have a meeting.

Back then I was dreaming of some shared application, people could put on their phone or laptop and then the collective could decide or at least hint through that software that the volume was up too high.

Haha I did something similar to my teebage neighbour and his Bluetooth boombox that he’d blast at midnight when his parents were away. I’d connect to his device and disconnect immediately. He also learned to turn it down after that. That was our communication channel. Every time it was too loud I’d connect and disconnect. Immediately after he’d reduce the volume to something reasonable.

Many of us have an aging neighbor whose hearing gradually worsens. The TV volume creeps up over time.

A simple, thoughtful fix is to gift them a wireless TV speaker designed for this exact problem.

The Sony SRS-LSR200 sits close to the listener, so dialogue is clear without blasting the TV for everyone else. It lets them enjoy their shows again without turning the volume knob into a neighborhood event.

There was a Windows 2000 bug that would allow the computer to be crashed via a malformed IrDA packet. Of course someone crafted a Palm Pilot app to zonk all the vulnerable PCs in the vicinity. It worked on servers as well. Endless fun for a little while.

When I lived in a NYC studio apartment, the neighbor directly above me was a DJ and used to mix club dance music at full volume. Around then I discovered the fuse boxes for several adjacent floors were located just down the hall from me in an unlocked utility closet.

Having the privilege to live in a house without common walls to a neighbor is the biggest quality of life improvement I've ever had the good fortune to experience.

I'd take a hell of a long commute to the burbs' before I'd go back to dealing with b.s. like this.

Loud music, slashed tires if you called the cops, people smoking weed and cigars and stinking up the whole building, parking space shortages, drunks throwing up in the stiarwells, screaming matches between people in bad relationships, horribly maintained flats and every repair done on the cheap, 4am fire alarms, a rat problem the owners would not put money in to fix properly, the list goes on and on over the 20+ years I lived in rentals.

We had such a neighbour also with an extremely loud TV on nearly all the time. We eventually deduced that he was deaf. We bought him headphones for the TV with a letter explaining the issue. Problem solved.

Seems like a good reason you should need to "pair" the RF remote to the device, similar to Bluetooth. Otherwise a bad actor in an apartment complex could get a "universal" RF remote and randomly try stuff until they can control your devices.

I hate loud neighbors. But I also am disappointed more apartments aren't built to be sound proof and that even if they are it's nearly impossible to find out if they actually are before moving in.

My good experience that told me this is possible is in 1999 I moved in to the my first apartment with a built in washer and dryer. When the agent showed me the apartment and pointed out the washer and dryer, I said something like "I guess I need to be sure not to use it too late so it won't annoy the neighbors". The agent said, "this building was originally built to be condos. Each outer wall is 6 inches of concrete with 6 inches of space between it and the next wall for the next unit. You can run the washer and dryer anytime you want, your neighbors won't hear it.

I've never been lucky enough to live in another apartment built that way. My current apartment, the neighbors are up stomping around the room and having loud conversations til 5am. I think they call family in Korea and so are up to match the time.

I haven't talked to them about it yet but I wish I just didn't have to and the apartment was designed better.