Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)First the good: Impression unboxing is it is a VERY compact unit. Appears sturdy and has some heft for it's size implying quality. Picture quality through matrix vs direct hookup appears identical. I'm using a 35 foot high quality hdmi cable to a projector on one of the outputs and this unit drives it no problem.
Not as good: The power cord has the typical chunky ac to dc block at the prongs, though not especially large, it extends out sideways from the prongs which may or may not cause you grief, and has a shortish 4 foot thin wire coming out of it to a round dc plug. The remote has a little plastic tab you need to pull to enable the battery, and then no indicator light for button presses. The operating angle for the remote to the unit is VERY shallow, so other reviews about the remote not working or being unreliable are likely just the shallow angle of operation (or they didn't pull the tab). The LEDs on the unit are multi color and VERY bright. If you have a dark home theatre or the unit is otherwise visable you will likely want to put something over them to obscure most of the light. The swiching itself works reliably on my Motorola HD DVR cable box (with DVI->HDMI cable), my PS3, and my Denon DVD player, but is very glitchy on my HTPC's ATI video card's Monitor 2 DVI output. I do not think this is the unit's fault as the HDCP handshake from the HTPC is either non-existant or non-standard, and it's had some glitches even with direct hookups.
The switching itself is rather slow (3 to 5 seconds?) and BOTH outputs blank out/flash a couple times when switching either output. I should quailfy that I only tested the unit with resolutions up to 1080i but have no reason to believe 1080p would behave any differently.
The Bad: The manual is typically poor. After reading through the introduction a couple times I was actually under the impression that I had ordered the wrong box, as it appeared to describe the outputs as switching together when an input is selected. Rest assured it is a true marix and not a switch/repeater. When first turning on the unit the leds all flash like crazy as if the box has freaked out or is defective, but apparently this is normal, with nothing about it in the manual. The Chenglish about this says "Once the power button is pressed, the two outputs will select the two input sources on the sequence (Source is in working situation)". I believe that means that the outputs will sequentially select active inputs, so there is apparently logic that will auto select active inputs when the matrix box power is cycled. I can not comment on this functionality as I did not test it, but for some applications this could be quite useful. There are instructions about hooking up inputs but nothing about outputs. Essentially, disconnect power from everything, hook it all up and power up everything, plugging in the matrix ac power last. All in all, it's a solid performer with a few (livable for me) drawbacks, and provides quite a lot of functionality for the money.
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PTC Premium 4x2 Matrix Switch HDMI 1.3 with IR Remote Control - Signal Amplification - Supports Full HD 1080p
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