An HDMI video switch (a.k.a. HDMI video switcher, HDMI switch box) receives HDMI signal from a few different HDMI devices and sends the signals from one of them to your HDTV. In this way, it serves as an agent to take numerous HDMI data for your own HDTV, though the HDTV has only a couple of HDMI port(s).
You could hook up many HD sources to the HDTV, like for example your favorite:
* Blu-Ray player, HD-DVD player, DVD player with HDMI output;
* Playstation 3, Xbox360, Wii with HDMI output;
* HTPC, or computers with HDMI ports;
* HDTV box, satellite dish network, HD PVR;
* HD camera, or HD cam recorder;
* All the other gizmos which are able to outputting HDMI signals.
For the ease of connecting many HDMI gizmos, just how much should you really invest on an HDMI switch?
The Right Price for An HDMI Video Switch
You may find famously-branded HDMI switches at roughly $250 in a neighboring BestBuy retail outlet, or maybe $150 if you look around a little bit. Your intuition certainly instantly tells you this does not make sense: HDMI switching is such a basic functionality, for what reason does it need to cost that much? Plus, with numerous 42-46 inch HDTVs priced more or less $600-700 in these days, $150 – $250 basically does seem to be too much, we might as well add a couple of hundred dollars to get a different HDTV.
How About Just $20?
Yes, a person only really need to put in $20 on a 3-port HDMI video switch, which will have the job done literally beautifully just like those $250 ones: they’ll have the same benefits such as support for 1080P FullHD, DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD, Linear PCM (LPCM), programmed and manual HDMI switching, HDMI v1.3b and HDCP pass-through.
Number of Ports Matter. More ports will need more materials and cost a little more. A 2×1 HDMI switch, with 2 HDMI inputs and 1 output, could cost about $10-15; at the same time a 5×1 HDMI video switch could cost you for maybe $30-40, but not $400.
Do They Actually Perform The Same?
Part of you inside quite possibly keeps telling you those really expensive ones must have superior audio/video quality, simply because they can charge much more, right?
But don’t forget, in the digital universe, it’s either 1 or 0: signals either get transmitted and transmitted in its 100% full quality, or it will get lost with nothing transmitted at all —- nothing in the middle.
The HDMI video switch won’t modify the data at all, HDMI data are handed over from the input port to the output port untouched, this then guarantees that anything in the HDMI source is going to be sent to the HDTV as if the HDMI source attaches to your own HDTV directly.
That is precisely the reason why a $20 HDMI video switch will have its HDMI switching job done equally well as $250 ones.