Home > Consumer Reviews > 3 Port Smart HDMI Switch

I have a two year old LCD projection HDTV that only has one HDMI port. I needed/wanted to run the video from my new Panasonic BD-35 Blu-ray player and the Dish Network HD box to the TV. With only the one HDMI port the solution (since I love my HDTV) was a HDMI switch box. This little gem works just as advertised without a power supply. It senses the the video component power on and automatically switches to the correct source. I was not sure if it work work since there is a constant feed (input) from the satellite box even in standby mode but when you turn off the programming and turn on the Blu-ray player it switches perfectly on it's own! There is a remote backup and you can switch the inputs manually but it's working great on it's own, switching back and forth automatically. This is a great product especially for the price!!!!

What the other reviewers are not telling you is that most HDMI devices (DVD players, Cable boxes, Directv boxes) output constant power/signal on the HDMI port. The "Smart" switch has no way of knowing when one of these devices is activated unless you unplug it and plug it back in or disconnect the HDMI cable. If you go through that, which I don't think most people do, it will switch to the most recently turned on device, but the priority function doesn't work and you wouldn't want it to work with a device that is always on. This is just an HDMI switch. Nothing smart about it.

Works as advertised. Comes with a small remote that isn't really necessary since it automatically switches to whatever port has a signal. In the case of more than one port being active, it switches to the lowest port number. This means that if you have a device that is always outputting video, like my satellite DVR, then you put that on port 3 and if you turn any other device on, like the xbox, then it switches away from satellite to xbox automatically. Very nice. Shipping was a little slow though.

I received this HDMI switch a few days ago and it works great. When researching it, I tried to find experiences of others with the Roku Netflix player, and I could not find any. So if anybody else wants to know my Roku experience, here it is:

My configuration is as follows: I have a DVD player, a cablebox/DVR, and the Roku player. If you've read the reviews you know that if multiple inputs are always "on", the switch cannot "guess" which one to switch to. In my configuration, the cable box and the Roku are always on.

What I have done is attached the devices in the order shown above - the DVD is "1", the cable box is "2" and the Roku is "3". So when I turn the DVD player on, the switch detects that and switches to DVD mode.

When I turn the DVD off, the switch automatically goes to the second device, which is always the cable box (even if I had been watching the Roku earlier).

The only ways to get to the Roku are to tap the button on the switch, or to use the remote. And that's fine, since I use the Roku much less frequently than the cable box or the DVD player. If it was other way around (use the Roku more than cable), I would just reverse the two devices, and plug the Roku into "2" and the cable into "3".

Speaking of the remote, I had no problem programming my universal remote to simulate the provided HDMI switch remote, so I have filed the provided remote away.

Finally, there is a feature that I don't believe I have seen mentioned in other reviews: the switch itself, and all its ungainly wires (3 input, one output) can be stowed discreetly BEHIND the DVD player or cable box or whatever. In effect it can be invisible. Infrared remotes cannot access hidden components, so they have provided a little mouse-shaped IR receiver, which I have placed on top of my DVD player. It is attached to the hidden switch via a provided cable, and it responds very well to my remote control

One thing I didn't notice was that this purchase included a single 3-foot HDMI cable. Since I didn't notice that I bought one extra cable (from the same Amazon supplier (CE Compass). So if you need cables to go with this switch, remember one comes with it. The extra cables that I got were dirt-cheap and they all seem to work great.

So we're very happy with this little purchase and fully recommend it.

This switch is amazing. It is an intelligent switch which means that it detects when you turn one input off and another one on and automatically switches to that HDMI input.

If that's not cool enough for you it also has 3 infrared remotes to manually change to the HDMI of your choice.

And did I mention that it does NOT need external power. It draws power from the main HDMI source.

You can NOT beat the price either.