For the sake of curiosity, do you remember if it was a cable company’s remote?
A major problem that I’ve observed in my short tenure in the video industry is that the cheap off the shelf solutions are all that OEM cable companies were willing to spend money on for a long time. Since they generally have minimal competition and are including remotes for free with a subscription, they’ve had no incentive to apply design solutions focused on UX. Additionally there are tons of back end services and other devices that often make extra buttons a necessity. I mean pairing all of the devices that may be in a theater into one remote and having enough feedback to allow confidence that everything is indeed paired is a logistic nightmare.
A lot of this is changing though. With the new up and comers like Roku (who has a great remote) , big enterprises are doing all they can to stop the cord cutting. The company I work for very recently started applying real design thinking to improve the UX and the brand as a whole. So hopefully, remote controls will become significantly better very soon across the board.