Since late last November, Nexus Player owners have had the frustrating experience of erratic behavior from the remote. After about 5 to 10 minutes, the remote would seemingly go to sleep. Pressing any button causes the remote to blink for a few seconds, then hopefully reconnect. While not precisely broken, the erratic functionality from the remote has been a point of pain for owners of Google's streaming hockey puck. Finally, Google is preparing to roll out a fix.
According to a post from a Google employee, the issue stems from nearby device scanning being accidentally turned on for the Nexus Player. The setting—and therefore the fix—will be distributed in a server-side Play Services update. Presently, there is no ETA for the rollout, though given that it is just a setting toggle, extensive testing should not be a reason for delay.
Unfortunately, the Nexus Player has not received an update from Android Oreo 8.0 to the newest 8.1, though the home screen and services APKs were recently moved to the Play Store. With the apparent death of the Nexus device program, no indications of a hardware refresh have been detected.
UPDATE: 2018/01/23 11:53am PST BY
In a recent comment made on the issue tracker, this problem has been marked as fixed, with a representative claiming that the correction is server-side and has now been released. We're warned that you need updated Google Play services to get the fix, so you can opt-in for the beta channel here or manually down the latest beta update at APK Mirror.
Source: Google Issue Tracker