I know someone who used to work for RCA around 1980. RCA was wanting to make an IR based remote, and the people at the manufacturing design location in Indy designed a big circuit that essentially took the ultrasonic signals and instead of using an acoustic ultrasound maker, modulated the IR LED with the same signals. My friend designed a remote that used a simple low power microprocessor, a "COPS" chip IIRC. That chip was programmed to produce digitally coded IR modulation with the IR LED. His needed only one chip, and a bunch of buttons and an IR LED, vs the other design that had tons of parts in it. Indy didn't want to use my friend's design, as it was "not invented here". Well, there was a shootout of sorts done with a pair of TVs and associated remote designs out in the parking lot on a sunny day. My friend didn't think either would work, but his did work well, and the other design failed badly... And my friend's design was much cheaper to make.
This was that remote, it was big, but nearly empty. It was big as they expected it needed to be, to house all the stuff of the other design. And they weren't going to toss 100,000 of these cases they already made...