Gefen also announced a much more straight forward HDMI switch today called the 4×1 Gefen tv Switcher. As the name implies, the switch accepts four HDMI inputs, has one HDMI output and sells for $199 (again, a bit steep). The device has auto switching capability which basically means if it detects an input device is powered on, it will switch to that device. If the device powers off, it will switch to the previous input it was at. The switch supports up to 1080p resolutions and includes an IR remote control.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Gefen, 4x1 Gefen tv Switcher, HDMI switch

If you have a TV set with a single HDMI input and you’re looking for a way to manage multiple analog and digital A/V sources without buying a full on receiver, then you might be interested in the newly announced Gefen GefenTV Multi Format Switcher. This box supports one component source with analog audio, one composite or S-Video source with analog audio, and two HDMI sources with digital audio, and then outputs via HDMI with video upscaled to 1080p using Gefen’s Home Theater Scaler Plus. The analog audio is even digitized and output via the HDMI output connection (or you can connect using a digital output as well). Each of the HDMI inputs also have separate digital audio inputs. The device comes with on-screen menus which are accessible via an IR remote.

Features include:

• DVI/HDCP/HDMI compliant input: Operates up to 165Mhz (Up to UXGA @60Hz)
• Supports digital HD output up to 1080p.
• Integrated 8-bit triple-ADC/PLL.
• Integrated DVI/HDCP/HDMI compliant receiver.
• Dual high quality scaling engines.
• Dual 3-D motion video adaptive de-interlacers with smooth low-angle edge.
• Automatic 3:2 pull-down & 2:2 pull-down detection and recovery.
• High performance frame rate conversion engine.
• The Proprietary Advanced Color Engine technology gives: Brilliant and fresh color, Intensified contrast and details, Vivid skin tone, Sharp edge, Accurate and independent color control
• Option to select Audio input from HDMI or TOSlink/SPDIF audio source.
• 3D noise reduction on analog inputs only.
• Operates through on-screen OSD menu control and remote control.
• Aspect Ratio Control
• Digital Audio Delay to match audio/video timing
• Less then one frame delay allowing for gaming

The GefenTV Multi Format Switcher is available for $499.00 which is a bit pricey. Of course.. at that price you might want to consider getting a low end receiver that does practically the same thing.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Gefen, GefenTV Multi Format Switcher, HDMI switch

StarTech sells two types of Extenders – a 4 port extender for $259.99 and an 8 port extender for $399.99.

If you couple each Cat5 output from these extenders with another 4 port line splitter (which sells for $399.99 a piece), then you can in theory get upwards of 32 different Cat5 lines coming from a single source -  a great way to distribute audio/video to multiple displays – especially for digital signage use.

To split the Cat5 signal back into the video and audio components, StarTech sells for $224.99 Long Range Receiver unit.

The entire system supports distances of up to 300m/950 feet and supports a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024 @ 60Hz. Too bad no HD support here.

Technorati Tags: StarTech, Converge A/V

Do you find yourself running out of HDMI inputs on your receiver or HDTV? If you’re like me, then the answer to that question is probably a resounding yes. The coming of HDMI greatly simplified home theater systems by combining the video and audio (and control) signals into a single cable. However, this simplicity also brings a problem to consumers. As more and more devices embrace HDMI, we’re running into a problem of a limited number of HDMI inputs on receivers and HDTV sets. You could get around this by buying a high end A/V receiver with four HDMI inputs but these receivers are typically rather expensive. Could we solve this by connecting to an HDTV? Problematic there also as many HDTV’s only have one or two or at most three inputs. What do you do then when you have an HDMI enabled cable box, PS3, and Xbox 360 and you only have two HDMI inputs to work with? You add an HDMI switch into the picture of course. That’s pretty much the problem I faced earlier this year when I finally caved and purchased a Sony PlayStation 3. I desperately needed more HDMI switches. Thus, today I’ll be looking at one such switch commonly found at local Best Buy stores. It’s called the Psyclone PSC47 and it’s one of the more expensive switches out on the market (at $199.99). Let’s see if the PSC47 is worth the money!

Features and Specs..

Features of the Psyclone PSC47 include the following:

• Four 1.3 HDMI inputs and one output
• Four digital optical audio inputs and one digital optical audio output
• Customizable LCD display for individualized input titles
• Standard component sized steel chassis with brushed aluminum front panel
• Gold plated HDMI connections
• Measures 411 mm x 242 mm x 50 mm
• Small remote control

The PSC47 is a unique HDMI switch in that it comes with four optical audio inputs (TOSlink). This is especially useful if you have an older receiver that doesn’t have any HDMI inputs but does have optical audio inputs. If your HDMI enabled device has an optical audio output, you can possibly connect both connectors (HDMI and optical audio out) to the PSC47 and then route the HDMI signal from the PSC47 to your HDTV while routing the optical audio output to your receiver. NOTE – The PSC47 will not separate the audio from the HDMI signal to the optical output. This means you do need to connect an optical audio connection from your original device to the PSC47 and then connect the optical audio out to your receiver. It’s also important to note that some devices will not deliver signals on both HDMI and optical audio simultaneously. Please check your device manuals for additional information.

For this review, I didn’t get a chance to test the optical audio switch portion of the PSC47 since I strictly used HDMI for routing audio and video in my home theater setup.

Physical Overview

First, let’s take a look at the packaging of the Psyclone HDMI Selector. Here’s the front of the box:

Here’s the back of the box:

Taking a peek inside.. nice nice..

Here’s a look at the packaging on the inside.

I wasn’t initially sure if the PSC47 came with an HDMI cable or not since the outside packaging didn’t indicate anything one way or another. However, once I pulled the switch out of the box, it was nice to see that Psyclone did indeed package a single HDMI cable (though a few more would have been nice too!).

Other included accessories include the power cord, remote control, and small instruction booklet.

Here’s a look at the front of the PSC47:

From left to right, you have:

• On/Off button
• IR Remote Sensor
• LCD display
• Joystick which allows you to edit the display names for the input channels
• Source Button/Gain Adjustment

Here’s a look at the back of the PSC47 (Don’t you just love the simplicity of HDMI cables?):

From left to right, you have:

• HDMI jacks (4 input followed by 1 output)
• Optical audio jacks (4 input followed by 1 output)
• Power jack

Setup

Setting up the PSC47 was pretty straight forward (getting everything to work correctly was a different story but more on that later). Simply gather all the relevant HDMI cables together, connect them to the relevant inputs on the switch and then connect the HDMI output from the switch to either the receiver or to the HDTV set.

I originally purchased the Psyclone PSC47 to add more HDMI inputs to my home theater setup. The main centerpiece to my home theater system is the Onkyo TX-SR804 receiver which only has two HDMI inputs. These two inputs were good enough originally but over the last year, I added on the Apple TV device and a Sony PlayStation 3 (and let’s not forget that I’ll eventually move to an HDMI enabled Xbox 360 too!). To get all of these devices routed through my receiver, I needed more HDMI inputs and that’s where the PSC47 came into play. My final setup had my Motorola cable box and Sony PS3 connected to the PSC47 which was then connected to the Onkyo reciever.  Note, many of you I’m sure will opt to use the PSC47 simply as a switch to your HDTV set. That’s perfectly fine too. Just take the scenario I have and remove the receiver from the picture.

Now note that I did say “final setup.” My original setup was slightly different. I originally planned to have my cable box, Apple TV, and PS3 connected to the PSC47 and then route the HDMI out to the receiver. Basically I wanted to use the PSC47 as the primary HDMI switch connected to a single HDMI input on the Onkyo receiver – leaving the second HDMI input on the receiver dedicated to my HTPC.

Here’s what the original setup was supposed to look like:

Everything worked initially. However after testing the various inputs and switching back and forth between devices and other inputs on my receiver, I started running into a consistent problem with the Apple TV. After much debugging and poking around online I discovered that Apple TV didn’t like being connected to either the PSC47 or the Onkyo receiver (and many other receivers out there). Apple TV would occasionally hang and need to be rebooted whenever I switched away from it and then back to it later on. After much testing, I decided to just directly connect the Apple TV to my Samsung HDTV and then route optical audio out to my receiver. This fixed the problem but it also meant that I was no longer using the PSC47 as a way to route the Apple TV device. Bummer.

Thus in the end, I had two devices connected to my PSC47 which was then connected to the Onkyo receiver. Thus, my final setup with the Psyclone PSC47 was as follows:

Was this the only problem I ran into with the PSC47? No.. but I’ll save that for the next section.

Usage

Let’s quickly go over the basic operations and functions on the PSC47. When the switch is turned off, the front left and right LED’s are red. When the switch is turned on, these indicators turn blue.

The Psyclone PSC47 has a customizable LCD display. Each of the HDMI inputs can be customized with its own label. You use a joystick located on the front of the HDMI Selector to navigate through the LCD menus and to customize the input labels. The joystick is a bit painful to use since you have to scroll through all of the characters to get the one you want (and the scrolling isn’t all that fast). Oh yes.. lowercase characters come after the uppercase ones which means you have to scroll through all of the uppercase to get to the lowercase. A royal pain in the !#@#@!.

The LCD display has a back-light which comes on for a few seconds when the device first turns on and when you’re switching between different inputs.

The PSC47 comes with a small remote control which is fine for people who don’t have a lot of remotes to deal with. However, if you’re like me, then you probably already have 4-5 remote controls, in which case having another remote can be a pain. Luckily, Logitech Harmony remote controls support the PSC47 switch so I had no problems integrating the switch into my activity driven Logitech Harmony 890 remote.

Here are additional pictures of the switch within my A/V rack. (It’s residing above my cable box)

Here’s a full height shot of my A/V rack:

Testing

With everything connected, it was time for some thorough testing. At first, all of the HDMI connected devices were showing up just fine on my television set (with sound coming out from speakers powered by the Onkyo receiver). I was easily switching between the cable box input and the PS3 input on the PSC47.

I then started testing some of my other A/V devices – notably the Apple TV which was connected to my TV set’s second HDMI input and my Xbox 360 which was connected to the HDTV set’s PC (VGA) input. The first HDMI input was connected to my Onkyo receiver.

Once I began switching between various inputs on my TV set, things began to get interesting (or rather, annoying). The problem was ultimately had to do with HDMI handshaking issues and HDCP authentication issues (did I mention that I hate HDMI?). Symptoms included no video signals on my TV set and HDCP authentication failure messages when I tried to watch the cable box.

After several days of testing and changing settings on my remote control, I realized the real culprit was the fact that my Harmony remote was programmed to turn the PSC47 switch off when it was not needed for a particular activity. For example: when I’m playing with the Xbox 360, I really don’t need the Psyclone PSC47 on because the Xbox 360 is directly connected to the TV set and to the A/V receiver. However if I wanted to watch cable TV, the Harmony remote would turn on the PSC47, and then switch the input to the cable box. Now, in theory, this SHOULD work without a problem but I ALWAYS got HDCP authentication problems going this route. The Samsung HDTV would display my HD video at lower resolutions – instead of 1080i, I was getting 480p.

The solution? Keep the switch on all the time. I programmed the Harmony 890 to never turn off the HDMI switch. Once the switch was left on all the time, all the handshaking and HDCP authentication issues disappeared.  Now granted, It’s a little annoying having a device left on the entire time but I can’t imagine the PSC47 consuming a great deal of power.

I’ve been testing the PSC47 for over two months now and I haven’t had a problem with it at all ever since I decided to leave the switch on all the time. Switching speeds are no slower than having just the receiver box in place. In fact, the Samsung HDTV set actually detects the HDMI video input from the cable box just a tad bit faster. My only beef still is with the Apple TV device which is directly connected to the HDTV set. Yet – I can’t necessarily blame Psyclone for this because the Apple TV device failed to work properly when connected to my Onkyo receiver also.

At the end of the day, the Psyclone PSC47 HDMI Selector works as advertised. It was easy to setup and integrated well into my home theater setup. I probably made things more complicated by having it connect to my A/V receiver but hey – these things should work right? Well sometimes. I’m fairly positive that the PSC47 would be just fine if it was the only switch between your television set and your video equipment.

The real question is – was it worth the $199.99. I honestly can’t say that it is. There are many other HDMI switches out there that offer the same number of ports for much less. There are two features that set the PSC47 apart from other switches though (which may or may not be important to you). Feature one is the optical audio inputs. Very useful again if you have a need to separately feed your optical audio to another device. The second feature is the overall look and feel of the PSC47. It’s well made and looks great within an A/V rack or cabinet. Many of the inexpensive switches that you see out in the market are usually small rectangular boxes that look somewhat awkward in a home theater setup. Of course, if you don’t care about that, then I would recommend you try the cheaper ones first.

Summary

This was certainly an interesting product review. I originally purchased the Psyclone PSC47 HDMI Selector because I had purchased a Sony PlayStation 3 after New Years and I ran out of HDMI inputs. I was either going to get a separate HDMI switch with many inputs OR get a new A/V receiver with tons of HDMI inputs and quite frankly, A/V receivers with 4 HDMI inputs are just way too expensive right now.

Along the way, I discovered some interesting things about my A/V devices and their relationships with HDMI. I discovered that the Apple TV doesn’t play very nicely with HDMI switches – at least not the PSC47 nor the Onkyo receiver.

I also discovered the complicated world of HDMI handshaking. Put one switch in the form of a receiver into the mix, and things are fine. Put a second HDMI switch into the mix and daisy chain them together and things get more interesting. My ultimate solution of course was to leave the PSC47 on all the time – not exactly a power saver’s dream.

Overall, the Psyclone PSC47 HDMI Selector is a well built switch – and honestly, it better be for $199.99. The PSC47 includes features such as the brushed aluminum front panel, customizable LCD display, classy component design, and optical audio switching.  However, you do end up paying a premium for the PSC47 and for many of you out there, these added features may not justify the $199 retail price.

So the question still remains – is the Psyclone PSC47 HDMI Selector the right HDMI switch for you? It ultimately depends on a number of factors.

• If you don’t care about having a rack sized chassis nor do you care about having an LCD display then get a small HDMI switch from vendors such as Monoprice, DVDO, XtremeMac (and many others). These switches tend to be 1/4 to 1/2 the price of the Psyclone device and should deliver similar performances.
• If you don’t care about TOSlink switching (optical audio), then look at cheaper HDMI switches
• If Apple TV has to be one of your HDMI inputs to the switch, then definitely look at other solutions. Some users have successfully used the Apple TV with other HDMI switches.
• If you do care about TOSlink switching along with HDMI switching, then the PSC47 should be a consideration
• If you do care about a customizable display, and a beautiful rack-sized chassis, then the PSC47 should be your consideration
• And finally, If money is no object at all, then do yourself a favor and just get a high end receiver with lots of HDMI inputs.

I’m sure over time we’ll see inexpensive receivers with many more HDMI inputs. Even now, there are several vendors with mid-range receivers in the $500-800 dollar range that feature three HDMI inputs. Not bad though it could be better. Perhaps I’m just a rarity in the consumer world but I do think it’s feasible to consume at least three HDMI inputs these days. It’s not unheard of for a family to have a cable box, a PS3 and an Xbox 360. Add in maybe an Apple TV, or an HTPC or even a standalone DVD/Blu-ray player, and things quickly get messy.

The Psyclone PSC47 works well with some caveats. It has features that will certainly attract some consumers out there. However, if you’re price conscious, I would seriously consider other brands. Even if you’re not price conscious, make sure that you really are ok with spending roughly 200 dollars for a switch (which is basically 1/2 to 1/3 of your way to a decent A/V receiver).

Pros:

• Solid construction
• Component design – matches well with other A/V components
• Optical audio inputs
• Remote control
• Customizable display

Cons:

• Expensive
• Apple TV doesn’t like it (but to be fair, it didn’t like the Onkyo receiver either)

Technorati Tags: Psyclone, HDMI Selector, Model PSC47, Review, HDMI Switch

Gefen announced a new line of add-on HDTV products yesterday called the Gefen TV product line. This new line is based on Gefen’s professional series solutions but is packaged differently and is designed for home users.

One of the first products to come out as part of the Gefen TV product line is the Gefen TV Switcher. This box (which is seems to be designed to match either an Apple TV or a Mac mini) is basically a four port HDMI switch – allowing you to connect various HDMI enabled devices to a single display or projector. The unit allows you to easily switch between the four sources or you can allow it to automatically switch to the recently powered on device. It’s HDMI version 1.3 compliant, HDCP compliant and supports HDMI pass through.  The switch measures 6.9 x 2.1 x 6.9 inches and weighs 6 lbs.

The product comes with the switch box, a RMT-4IR remote control, four 6 foot HDMI cables (very nice addition here), a 5VDC power supply, as well as a user manual.  The Gefen TV Switcher has an MSRP of $199.

You can expect to see additional Gefen TV products down the road including the SD and HD Personal Video Recorders.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Gefen, Gefen TV, Gefen TV Switcher

This moves the topic into another area: Why did I finally go out and get a Blu-ray player? I had to face the facts folks. More and more high definition titles (especially ones I would be interested in) were coming out in Blu-ray over HD DVD. With the majority of the Hollywood studios backing Blu-ray, it really does seem that HD DVD is fighting a slowly eroding fight. I don’t think HD DVD will go away per se but I do think that the war is definitely tipping over towards Blu-ray. For some time, I  must admit that I chose not to go Blu-ray simply because of my bias against Sony but at the end of the day, it boiled down to content. Content is the reason I don’t game on the PS3 but content is also the reason I’m choosing to get a Blu-ray player. Yes.. content is king.

Another interesting thing happened this week as a result of my purchase of the PS3. I needed more HDMI ports in my home theater system. After much online research and inner debating, I finally decided to get myself a Psyclone 4 port HDMI switch. It’s more expensive than many other HDMI switches but what attracted me was the rack design as well as the customizable LCD display. So far, it’s handled the HDMI devices that I’ve thrown at it (the output of the Psyclone is connected to my Onkyo receiver which then forwards the signal to my Samsung 46 inch LCD HDTV). Stay tuned for a review of the Psyclone unit.

So that’s it for now. I’m still a fan of HD DVD and I will still continue to purchase titles in HD DVD.. but I have a funny feeling that where titles are available in both HD DVD and Blu-ray, I will opt for Blu-ray. I hate to say it but Blu-ray might just be the way to go for the long haul.

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Digital Trends has published a review of the OPPO HM-31 HDMI switch here on their website. HDMI switches are becoming more of a necessity as folks purchase more devices with HDMI output. Simply get yourself an HD capable cable set-top box, an Xbox 360 console, and a Playstation 3 console, and you’ll find yourself wanting three HDMI inputs on your HDTV set (which if it’s been around for a year or two probably only has one or at most two). So what do you do? You either get yourself a high end receiver with 3-4 HDMI inputs or you shell out about $100 bucks for a standalone HDMI switch such as the OPPO HM-31. Here’s the verdict from Digital Trends:

The OPPO HM-31 HDMI switch is a great little device for adding more HDMI devices than your HDTV can natively handle. The HM-31 is easy to use, takes up very little space and comes with a compact little remote. The HM-31 does one thing – and does it well.

I’ve been contemplating getting an HDMI switch myself – if only to augment my existing HDMI switching capable Onkyo receiver (which only has two HDMI inputs). It’s either that or upgrade to a new receiver with many more HDMI inputs (and pay much much more money) *sigh*..

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: OPPO, HM-31