Apple TV 4K Siri Remote Caused Bootloop

My Apple TV 4K WiFi+Ethernet was working fine and plugged in unmoved since I bought it under two years ago.

Yesterday, I noticed a couple of uninitiated inputs occurring, and it looked like my Siri Remote was stuck between the couch cushions. I removed it, and not 30 seconds later, the Apple TV turned off, and never booted again.

It was stuck in a bootloop, showing the Apple logo, then restarting resulting in a loss of signal, rinse and repeat.

Thinking a simple restart would help, I power cycled the device, to no avail. Pursuing threads on the matter on this forum, I found that the remote could be used to reboot the device or otherwise alter the settings between loops.

Holding the Menu and Down buttons caused the device to enter a “Recover with iPhone” screen. Attempting to do this process caused the device to begin recovery with a loading bar, but it bootlooped again - and this would also keep happening.

I am not able to get it to the recovery screen, the Recover with iPhone prompt, or any other screen. Just the Apple logo again and again.

Today, I took it to the Apple Store, and unsurprisingly, there was nothing they could do but act astonished that a device without any manual recovery means (no USB port) could suffer from a software or firmware failure. However, in our back and forth troubleshooting, which involved an older Apple TV being plugged in to check the remote, something happened that validated for me that the remote was at fault: the demo unit Apple TV started bootlooping. In fact, it might be permanently so.

The only constant in any case was my remote, which itself was an Apple-provided replacement for the original in-box remote, which started doing phantom inputs a few months ago.

There are other posts on this forum about the bootloop issue being caused by the remote, and I am certain now that this is a prevalent issue and inherent flaw in the device design. But unlike in those posts, removing the remote from the vicinity or Faraday caging it does not help, as the damage has been done already, and without a manual recovery means, this device is as good as a paperweight.

On the bright side, this remote, in all its glitched firmware stuck button glory, appears to be a virus given corporeal form. So it might make a nice gift for any enemies who own an Apple TV.

If anyone has any troubleshooting thoughts or ideas, that would be a fantastic help. Thanks so much. I can’t spend another 150 on another one of these.