I bought a new computer, an HP Slimline. Works great. It came with a bag of accessories, most of which I can identify. But what the heck is this:
I’m sure it’s blatantly obvious. It must be, otherwise HP would have included some instructions on how to use it.
Looks like it might be a microphone of some sort.
Another handy accessory is a spellchecker. 
Spellcheck doesn’t work in the title box for some reason.
The plug is red and there’s a hole in the back of the computer that’s red with something that could be a mic symbol. The box is solid plastic, no holes or a grill I would expect to see as part of a mic. Hmmm.
It could be a form of infrared receiver. That item looks similar to a device that plugged in via USB that came with a tv tuner card I bought a few years back.
Did you try plugging it into the red hole, and seeing if you can record your voice?
It might be a webcam. That curved plastic thing might clip on the top of a monitor.
Okay I found a piece of paper that was in the accessory bag. (Called “Accesory List”, HP’s spellchecking sucks too.) It reads:
1 Cable-IR Blaster
1 Documentation
1 External Cable
1 Monitor Adapter
1 Power Cable
1 Remote Control
1 Video Adapter
1 Wireless Mouse
From Google I see that the Cable-IR Blaster is another thing I have here; a plug on one end and a teardrop shaped red plastic thingy on the other which the remote control talks to.
That just leaves External cable, Monitor Adapter and Video Adapter. One of those would be this plug that I haven’t found a use for that has one yellow hole in one end and 4 pins on the other.
It’s a good thing computers are such simple products or they’d have to include instructions with them.
What application would I launch to record in?
The curved piece could clip on to something. It has a small pivoting range of motion to the little black box. But a webcam would have something that looks like a lens wouldn’t it? The front of this is just smooth, featureless plastic.
According to this page it’s an IR receiver. Archived - HP Support Community (scroll down)
Yep, that’s it. I guess I don’t need it as I’ve run my TV cable directly to the computer’s TV tuner, that is, no set top box involved. It’s not HD, but I don’t care that much about watching TV on my computer anyway.
Thanks for the help. All I got when searching accessories at HP were links to buy MORE accessories. I just wanted to know what to do with the ones I had already bought.