An HDMI video switch (a.k.a. HDMI video switcher, HDMI switch box) takes HDMI data from many different HDMI sources and sends the data from one of these to your HDTV. In such a manner, it behaves as an agent to take many HDMI signals for your favorite HDTV, even if your favorite HDTV has only a couple of HDMI port(s).
You can hook up a few HD sources to the HDTV, like for example the:
* Blu-Ray player, HDDVD player, DVD player with HDMI output;
* Playstation 3, Xbox360, Wii with HDMI output;
* HTPC, or computers with HDMI ports;
* HDTV box, satellite dish network, HDTV recorder;
* HD camera, or HD cam recorder;
* All other gizmos that are able to outputting HDMI signals.
For the value of connecting many HDMI gadgets, how much should you really spend on an HDMI switch?
The Right Price for An HDMI Video Switch
You can definitely find famously-branded HDMI switches at approximately $250 in a nearby BestBuy retail outlet, or maybe $150 if you search a little bit. Your favorite intuition certainly quickly tells you this doesn’t make sense: HDMI switching is such a simple feature, for what reason does it have to cost you that much? In addition, with a great many 42-46 ” HDTVs priced around $600-700 today, $150 – $250 certainly would seem to be far too much, we might as well add a couple of hundred dollars to purchase a new HDTV.
How About Just $20?
For sure, customers only have to invest $20 on a 3-port HDMI video switch, which will have the task done literally perfectly just as those $250 ones: they’ve got exactly the same goodies like support for 1080P FullHD, DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD, Linear PCM (LPCM), auto and manual HDMI switching, HDMI v1.3b and HDCP pass-through.
Number of Ports Matter. More ports need to have more components and cost a little bit more. A 2×1 HDMI switch, with 2 HDMI inputs and 1 output, will probably cost about $10-15; at the same time a 5×1 HDMI video switch could cost you for perhaps $30-40, but not $400.
Do They Truly Perform The Same?
Part of you inside quite possibly keeps telling you that those higher priced ones have to have much better audio/video quality, simply because they charge much more, right?
However, in the digital universe, it’s either 1 or 0: signals either get transmitted and transmitted in its 100% full quality, or it’ll get lost with nothing transmitted at all —- absolutely nothing is in between.
The HDMI video switch is not going to change the data at all, HDMI signal are handed over from the input port to the output port untouched, this then ensures that everything in the HDMI source is going to be sent to your favorite HDTV as if the HDMI source hooks up to your own HDTV directly.
That is really the key reason why a $20 HDMI video switch will have its HDMI switching job done equally well as $250 ones.