Media remote / general help

Hey so I’m dog sitting for friends for over a week. I brought my Xbox one over and they had one set up already so I just unplugged their power/hdmi cable and plugged them into my Xbox. Only to find out that the hdmi cable doesn’t go into the TV, it goes into the wall, and they had what I now know is the Xbox media remote. I could not just “source” over to my Xbox on their TV remote. So here’s the deal. After plugging my xbox one in, the media remote will turn on my Xbox but do nothing else. None of the buttons appear to do anything and holding down the power button on the remote also does nothing. I thought it would auto-swap over to my Xbox when I turned it on but nothing is happening. Do I need to plug my Xbox into a different TV and change a setting or something? Or am I just out of luck? Does anyone have any idea?

Side note: they’re out of the country so I was unable to contact them