Its your Roku hardware remote that you buy. When the remote is paired with the TV, the tv recognizes the remote (HW signed, TV manufacturer approves this whitel

Its your Roku hardware remote that you buy. When the remote is paired with the TV, the tv recognizes the remote (HW signed, TV manufacturer approves this whitelist), the tv downloads the roku operating system and starts running it. This simply replaces wasteful HDMI interfaces, SoCs, etc and provides hooks for the tv to have better control over the experience. You could imagine extending this to video game controllers like Amazon Luna or Google Stadia.