Old HDTVs tend to feature merely 1 or 2 HDMI ports, and this puts the early adopters in a somewhat awkward position today, as there are so numerous HDMI tools to be plugged in, yet so few HDMI ports available.
In order to connect your many HDMI units to your HDTV, one of many ways, obviously, is to upgrade to a new HDTV which nowadays normally has 4 or more HDMI ports, but that also ends up in significantly lighter weight of your wallet.
A more inexpensive way is to get an HDMI switch, which can connect various HDMI units to your HDTV via a single HDMI port.
What Is an HDMI Switch, and What Does It Do?
An HDMI switch (a.k.a. HDMI switcher, HDMI selector) gets HDMI data from multiple HDMI sources and directs the data to your HDTV, occupying only 1 HDMI port. It serves as an agent to receive various HDMI signals for your HDTV, even when your HDTV has only 1 or 2 HDMI port(s).
Using an HDMI switch, you can hook up multiple HD sources to your HDTV, such as:
* Blu-Ray player, HD-DVD player, DVD player with HDMI output;
* PS3, Xbox360, Wii with HDMI output;
* HTPC, or computers with HDMI ports;
* HDTV box, satellite dish network, HDTV recorder;
* HD camera, or HD Cam recorder;
* Any other tools capable of outputting HDMI signals.
See How Easily It Works
There are 3-port, 4-port, and 5-port HDMI switches, and those rare ones with more ports. The most frequently used and most budget friendly ones (due to mass production) are 3-port HDMI switches.
On a 3-port HDMI switch, there are 4 HDMI ports: 3 input ports receiving signals from 3 of your HDMI sources, and 1 output port sending signals to the HDTV. There is generally a LED light on each input side to indicate which source is chosen.
An HDMI switch normally features automatic switching, and allows you to override and manually select your source; some enhanced HDMI switch will have a remote control to make switching HDMI much simpler.
Automatic HDMI switching
A good HDMI switch need to have this automatic switching feature.
When you switch on an HDMI source, the HDMI switch will automatically pick this source. If you decide to switch on another one, the HDMI switch will switch to this second source. If you switch on another, it’ll jump to this third device.
In most cases, this can be intelligent enough to work out just fine and take care of most, if not all, of your switching needs.
Manual HDMI switching
The above-mentioned auto-switching feature may not always work when there is one or more HDMI sources “always on”, such as an HD PVR or a satellite network box, which you often don’t switch off that often, and is, therefore, always turned-on in the background.
In that case, you will have to manually select your preferred HDMI source.
An HDMI switch with manual overriding function would mostly have a button on it, which will allow you to manually select your preferred HD source by pushing it.
For example, if the switch is currently on Input 1, your pressing the button once will let you select Input 2, pressing it again allows you to jump to Input 3.
HDMI switch with remote
A remote control would be a lot more convenient when you could just sit back and relax on your couch, and select whatever input by pressing on the remote control, than walking over to the switch and push a button on it.
Tags:
early adopters,
hd camera,
hd dvd player,
hdmi switch,
input ports,
satellite dish network