Thread of the year.

I bought one of these for under £15.

Hdmi Switch, mrocioa 3 Port input 1 out 4K Hdmi Switcher Box with Remote. Hdmi Splitter 4K Hub. Support PS4/ Xbox One/Fire TV/Apple TV/SKY BOX/STB/DVD/Laptop/Roku.

It's pretty shit and freaks out when I plug the series s or ps5 in so don't buy one or anything else that looks like a rebadged version. They're cheap shit. Works fine with the bt box and switch though so maybe it's the awesome power of next gen it can't handle.

I’ve got some cheap piece of shit from Amazon that should auto-switch between the PS4 and the Nintendo and sometimes it does but sometimes it doesn’t and you have to get up and press the switch yourself and you wonder why you bought a cheapo shit one instead of one that might actually work as intended but even if you were going to do that you wouldn’t know where to buy one anyway.

So last time I looked these couldn’t handle 4K @120 so if you intend to run your ps5 and or Series X (and you have the right telly) then your gonna miss out some of their features.  I tried running the switch and sky through one a while back but the remote control never fucking worked and it turns out it’s just easier to flip the hdmi between devices than it was fuck about getting that thing to work.  Waste of money tbh.

I looked around a lot just before getting my new TV and nope, couldn’t find anything that handles HdMI 2.1, but I have enough ports. For now.

4 but you need one for your Sonos bar.

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

So last time I looked these couldn’t handle 4K @120 so if you intend to run your ps5 and or Series X (and you have the right telly) then your gonna miss out some of their features.  I tried running the switch and sky through one a while back but the remote control never fucking worked and it turns out it’s just easier to flip the hdmi between devices than it was fuck about getting that thing to work.  Waste of money tbh.

Yup, was certainly the case when I bought one from Amazon last Christmas. My screen is 1080p so it wasn't an issue for me, and the box I bought has been really good, but yeah, be careful, because unless tech has caught up, there certainly wasn't one available 9 months ago that could actually do the very latest HDMI specs for stuff like 4K 120hz.

The one I bought can be found here.

There's barely a PC that can do 4k 120 on anything AAA new (bar DOOM and Eternal) so I really wouldn't worry about it unless youre looking to play 5-10 year old games like that.

There's already been one major game (R&C Rift Apart) that uses 120Hz mode to add a 40Hz mode with all the RT trimmings, will probably be more. Really depends on what TV ZMM has though, and if he has a fancy new one whether he has enough ports to put some older HDMI devices through the splitter instead of the consoles.

Just make sure it's a powered splitter, with it's own plug, not USB powered, and definitely not unpowered.

ZMM wrote:

Thank you for your help everyone, because this was specifically to do with consoles I didn't really think it was for the off topic section but there you go, it depends which way you look at it I guess. I will have to just invest in a new TV at some point, rather than spending £40-£50 on a splitter that can handle HDR and all that gubbins, because it has 3 HDMI ports, only two of which have HDCP2.2, which is required by my tv soundbar, meaning the remaining one will have to be for the consoles. I have my switch connected to the third HDMI port though as it only has a measly 1080p!

Is it an option to use an optical to HDMI converter with your soundbar? It might be preferable to running a splitter. It's what I did for a while with my Sonos Beam with no noticeable difference to performance. TV optical -> Optical to HDMI adapter -> Soundbar.

Depends on your soundbar and its features. If you try using optical for a Sonos Arc, you lose quite a bit of its functionality.

drumbeg wrote:

What do you lose out of interest? When I tried it with a Sonos Beam, I think there was a bit of a UI quirk when I changed volume, but didn't notice much else.

It’s probably okay with a Beam. The Arc relies a lot more on HDMI-eARC to work properly. I lost the ability to control volume from the standard TV remote, which is pretty basic stuff … had to use my phone and the Sonos app to turn it up and down. 

I tried all this out when I was having compatibility issues between my Samsung telly and the Sonos Arc. All fixed now by firmware updates.

Over optical you lose Dolby Atmos completely. Over plain HDMI you lose uncompressed audio - which is fine for Netflix and Disney+ because their audio is always compressed anyway. It’s a hassle with broadcast BBC, iPlayer and Amazon Prime - the Arc expects uncompressed audio from them, and shuts off in a huff when it receives compressed audio instead. I switched to just plain old stereo to avoid having to go change settings all the time.