Thinking about it, your television remote control is pretty limited in its capabilities.

It lets you change channels, alter the volume, toggle subtitles, read teletext, set the recorder, press the red button and, perhaps most important of all, turn the idiot machine off.

However, should a number of American companies have their way, your mobile will soon become your remote. And, because it is your mobile, it will also offer you increased functionality.

For example, your existing remote only has a numerical keypad. That makes it harder to run text searches of the electronic programme guide or interact with the likes of Facebook or Twitter, both of which can now be seen on internet connected TVs.

Were you able to use the physical or virtual Querty on your phone, life would be so much easier.

Similarly, with an appropriate app, interactive options could be enhanced considerably. And, using the microphone on your mobile, voice control should be a real possibility.

What’s more, as a remote, your mobile really can operate remotely. No longer do you, your control and your television all have to be in close proximity. Indeed, Sky subscribers can already use their handsets to set their Sky+ boxes to record their favourite programmes wherever their phone can get a signal.

Then there are those of you who might want to transfer content from your mobile to view on your television with but a flick of your wrist. There’s nothing remote about this prospect, and it’s a topic we have discussed before on this blog.

By now the technophobes amongst you are probably asking where it will all end. Well, not here is the answer, certainly if Minh Doan, vice president of engineering for Unity4Life, has his way.

Quoted by Total Telecom he resolutely exclaims: “We want to start moving towards full home automation.”

His plan is to let you use your mobile for everything from controlling the central heating to operating the oven, from closing the garage door to turning on the living room lights.

Nor is he alone. There are others, such as Verizon, AT&T and DirecTV, with their own ideas.

There is clearly some logic in only having to have the one remote. As anybody who has ever had the misfortune of having to juggle a multiplicity of the monstrosities after a couple of glasses will no doubt recall, trying to remember which controls the TV, which the VCR, which the hi-fi and which the whatever else can sometimes prove beyond challenging.

Conversely, were you to be entirely dependent on your mobile, there is always the danger you forget to recharge it. Or you leave it in the pub or at the office. Or you just don’t have it with you when you need it.

Were that to happen, and were there to be something you really wanted to watch, forget about having no control. Worry instead about losing it completely.

After all, television is supposedly our window on the world, although broadcasters and politicians sometimes obscure the view. More pertinently, as every parent knows, it remains the perfect means of changing any child from an irresistible force in to an immovable object.

Fights have been fought for the control of the remote. The film director Alfred Hitchcock even claimed television bought murder in to the home where, he said, it belonged. It has been accused of promoting the superficial and condemned for killing conversation. It remains the most powerful of all media.

Now there are those, like Minh Doan, who want you to use your phone to control your set. But there are others who want you to watch television on your phone.

Although such concepts may seem remote the reality, for better or worse, will soon be anything but virtual.