I've been snowed in the last few days and had some time to experiment with my setup. First the cool news.
TL;DR:
The
SGEYR 5x1 4K60 18Gbps units can be used as a basis for HDMI auto-switching star configuration for
most consoles.
Longer:
The
SGEYR 4K@60Hz 5x1 HDMI Switch HDMI Selector Switch 5 Port HDR IR Remote 4K HDMI Selector Box 5 in 1 Out Auto Switch HDMI Switcher 2.0 HDCP 2.2,Full HD has continued to fascinate me because it does something fairly unique among the switches I've tried. It can be *fully* powered by an active HDMI connection.
Originally I didn't want this because my PC was hooked up to my gaming rack while being the only thing not depending on the rack being powered. And whenever I turned it on, it would power a significant chunk of my HDMI chain just from my video card. And I was unsure if that was adding strain to my video card.
However. If we take that property and apply it just to devices that depend on rack power. My concern about strain is significantly reduced because I know the HDMI chain is already powered.
So, as an experiment. I unplugged DC power from my chained SGEYR switch that had older consoles on it. And removed my always-on OSSC from feeding into it. This caused the unit to remain off when none of those consoles were on. And to turn on when one of the consoles turned on. It then fed to my head switch which was a powered sgeyr 5x1.
I then hooked my always-on OSSC directly to the head 5x1.
When I powered on the rack, the OSSC showed up as expected.
When I powered up one of the consoles hooked up to the secondary switch. That secondary switch powered up, selected the console correctly, and signalled the main switch to listen to the chained switch.
When I powered down the consoles, the secondary switch powered off, and the main switch went back to the OSSC. SUCCESS!!!!
This setup worked with almost all of my consoles. So it's not bulletproof. But it worked with enough to be very useful.
Consoles that worked feedinginto the
UNPOWERED secondary:
Launch model PS3 fat.
XBox 360 (unsure the model, one of the somewhat later revisions that didn't RROD as much)
Wii U
Nintendo Switch using the OEM dock hardware (transplanted into a non-sandwich dock)
XBox One X
What didn't work:
PS4 Pro. It looks like it powers off the HDMI port when switching resolution. So the switch looked like it was boot looping over and over.
I'll have to try more consoles later. My assumption is the PS4 HDMI output was needlessly overcomplicated and will probably be the only console that doesn't work.
For now I just need to keep my PS4 Pro hooked up to the head switch. And with the star configuration for 5 consoles. I can move my OSSC up to the head switch to avoid a hop there on resolution change. So I still have 2 more ports that can potentially be star configured if necessary.
Other less exciting data. I tried more switches and splitters.
Switches:
Fosmon 5 Port HDMI Switch, HDMI 2.0 Auto Switch, 4K@60Hz 5x1 Switcher Splitter Box with Remote Control Support 4Kx2K, Full 1080p, 3D HDR, 18Gbps, HDCP 2.2 for Apple TV, Fire Stick, HDTV, PS4, Xbox, PCThis one seems to have pretty good mode support overall. But I kept getting video & audio glitches (not full drops) in OSSC. But not 100% of the time. And I sometimes saw this in 4K modes. But more rarely.
There might be some specific incompatibility here that I'm not accounting for. Would be good if someone else can confirm the behavior. It did generally work with all the modes most of the time. So it's promising if the glitches aren't widespread.
Splitters:
SGEYR HDMI Cable Splitter 1 in 4 Out HDMI 2.0 Distribution Box HDMI Splitter Amp Supports 4K@60Hz HDR Full Ultra HD 1080P and 3D Compatible with XboxThe big negative with this one is I can't figure out the EDID management. It has an EDID button. But the manual lists four states in binary notation making me think it was meant to have dip switches. I can't find any data on how it's supposed to translate to a single button. I asked a question about it on the Amazon listing and got no response. As far as I can tell the button does not rotate modes.
The default EDID was pretty limited and annoying. Only supported YUV420 for HDR. And only apparently supported stereo audio.
I *think* it worked fine with OSSC. But I didn't commit that to notes. It's definitely not good for 4K consoles.
weJupit HDMI Splitter 1 in 4 Out 4K 60 Hz, HDCP 2.2 HD Audio AC Adaptor, Support 3D/4K/2K/1080P, Compatible with PS3 PS4 Xbox FireStick Roku DVD Player Apple TV(1x4 1 Input to 4 Outputs, 4K@60Hz)I just tried this last night for a bit. Seemed fine with OSSC. But it's even worse at EDID than the SGEYR. I couldn't get it to support 7.1 audio after 20 minutes of fiddling. I couldn't get it to support HDR. And the default resolution appears to be 1080p even though I could keep switching it back to 4k
gofanco Prophecy 1x4 HDMI 2.0 Splitter 4K 60Hz HDR Compact USB Powered Auto Scaling Wall Mount, YUV 4:4:4, 3D, HDMI 2.0a, HDCP 2.2, EDID, 18Gbps, Low Heat, 4 Port 1 in 4 Out (PRO-HDRsplit4P-LT)This one has had pretty good results. Has EDID dip switches that make sense. Seems to work well with OSSC and PS4 Pro 4K60RGB.
The one hiccup is that switching to PS4 Pro 4K HDR with 7.1 PCM audio takes a *really* long time to sync while this is in the chain. Like 15-20 seconds long. Annoying, but that switch doesn't happen often. And the audio still works unlike the other gofanco splitter I'm using.
Matrix Devices:
I finally tried a matrix device to reduce hops. I'm generally hesitant to try matrices because of the associated cost. And, in general, most HDMI devices don't work as well as I need them to.
4K HDMI Matrix Switch 4 X 2 by Orei Switcher 18G UltraHD with Arc Supports Upto 4K @ 60Hz & 1080P IR Audio Extractor Arc EDID HDCP 2.- Remote Control - Full Matrix SelectionThis one caught my eye because it has an automatic switching mode. However, it had a bunch of incompatibilities.
While the OSSC test pattern worked (pretty sure this is 480p). I fired up my NES. And couldn't get it to work with 480p or 960p with that.
I had trouble getting my sound extractor to work at all with it in PS4 4K60RGB.
And a bit annoying. It kept triggering my Samsung TV's device detection screen every time I changed resolution. Super annoying.