Hooking Up Several HDMI Gizmos to an Old HDTV

Old HDTVs are likely to have only 1 or 2 HDMI ports, and this puts the early adopters in a little awkward position today, as there are so various HDMI products to be plugged in, yet so few HDMI ports available.

In order to connect your various HDMI devices to your HDTV, one way, obviously, is to upgrade to a HDTV which right now most likely has 4 or more HDMI ports, but that also ends up in significantly lighter weight of your wallet.

A more inexpensive way is to apply an HDMI switch, which can connect many HDMI gizmos 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) receives HDMI signals from HDMI sources and sends the data to your HDTV, occupying just 1 HDMI port. It will serve as an agent to receive many HDMI signals for your HDTV, even if your HDTV has only 1 or 2 HDMI port(s).

By having an HDMI switch, you can hook up a variety of 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 products 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 popular and most inexpensive ones (due to mass production) are 3-port HDMI switches.

On a 3-port HDMI switch, there’ll be 4 HDMI ports: 3 input ports getting signals from 3 of your HDMI sources, and 1 output port transmitting signals to the HDTV. There is mostly a LED light on each input side to display which source is selected.

An HDMI switch normally offers you automatic switching, and allows you to override and manually select your source; some enhanced HDMI switch would have a remote control to help switching HDMI much easier.

Automatic HDMI switching

A useful HDMI switch need to have this automatic switching feature.

When you turn on an HDMI source, the HDMI switch will automatically select this source. If you decide to switch on another one, the HDMI switch will switch to that second source. If you switch on another, it’ll jump to this third device.

Generally speaking, this can be smart enough to work out properly and take care of most, if not all, of your switching needs.

Manual HDMI switching

The above-mentioned auto-switching function may not always work when there is one or more HDMI sources “always on”, such as an HDTV recorder or a satellite network box, which you likely don’t turn off that often, and is, as a result, always turned-on in the background.

In that case, you will have to manually select your preferred HDMI source.

An HDMI switch having manual overriding feature would often have a button on it, which will let you to manually pick your preferred HD source by pressing it.

To illustrate, 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 change to Input 3.

HDMI switch with remote

A remote control would be so much more convenient when you can just sit back and relax on your sofa, and select whatever input by pushing on the remote control, than going over to the switch and push a button on it.