i wonder why hdmi switches range from like $15 to over $100 when they all ostensibly do the same thing if specced equivalently
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i wonder why hdmi switches range from like $15 to over $100 when they all ostensibly do the same thing if specced equivalently
like, for over $100 you can get a 4 in 4 out hdmi matrix, not just a 4 in 1 out switch. why would you pay $115, $70, or even $35 when you could pay $15? presumably it is possible that there is some fine print i'm missing, but for the life of me i can't find anything "missing" from the cheaper switches... they look like perfectly fine HDMI 2.1 switches to me!
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i wonder why hdmi switches range from like $15 to over $100 when they all ostensibly do the same thing if specced equivalently
like, for over $100 you can get a 4 in 4 out hdmi matrix, not just a 4 in 1 out switch. why would you pay $115, $70, or even $35 when you could pay $15? presumably it is possible that there is some fine print i'm missing, but for the life of me i can't find anything "missing" from the cheaper switches... they look like perfectly fine HDMI 2.1 switches to me!
if anything, the cheaper switches actually seem to be *better* than the more expensive ones, because some of the cheaper ones support automatic switching and some of the expensive ones don't support it
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i wonder why hdmi switches range from like $15 to over $100 when they all ostensibly do the same thing if specced equivalently
like, for over $100 you can get a 4 in 4 out hdmi matrix, not just a 4 in 1 out switch. why would you pay $115, $70, or even $35 when you could pay $15? presumably it is possible that there is some fine print i'm missing, but for the life of me i can't find anything "missing" from the cheaper switches... they look like perfectly fine HDMI 2.1 switches to me!
@trwnh This was a few years ago, but the experience I had with a cheap 2 in/1 out switch was that it didn't do anything at all about the HDCP "handshake".
If you had the switch on A, and turned on the TV and source A, no problem - you saw A's output.
If you then wanted to use source B, you could turn the switch to B, turn on source B... and the TV would refuse to show you B's output until you power-cycled the TV.
I am told, but don't know, that some of the fancier HDMI switches maintain an HDCP handshake between the switch and the TV, regardless of what switch input is selected. That way, the TV thinks it's always talking to the same device, and doesn't (potentially) get mad when you switch inputs.
Again, this was with an older TV and cheap switch. This problem may no longer exist with newer devices.
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@trwnh This was a few years ago, but the experience I had with a cheap 2 in/1 out switch was that it didn't do anything at all about the HDCP "handshake".
If you had the switch on A, and turned on the TV and source A, no problem - you saw A's output.
If you then wanted to use source B, you could turn the switch to B, turn on source B... and the TV would refuse to show you B's output until you power-cycled the TV.
I am told, but don't know, that some of the fancier HDMI switches maintain an HDCP handshake between the switch and the TV, regardless of what switch input is selected. That way, the TV thinks it's always talking to the same device, and doesn't (potentially) get mad when you switch inputs.
Again, this was with an older TV and cheap switch. This problem may no longer exist with newer devices.
@pair12 yeah i'm using a monitor from 2021 but it's nothing fancy, just an hdmi 1.4b connection with hdcp 2.2 and a lot of these cheap switches claim support for that (and more!) quite handily.
