A Quick and Dirty review of the DIGITECH Audio Visual HDMI Extender (TCP/IP) model
So, here it is... The Digitech HDMI Extender over TCP/IP AC-1734.
I bought the AC-1734 HDMI Extender from JayCar on the Gold Coast with some Christmas gift cards I've been collecting since I've always found JayCar to be horribly over priced for hobbyist items that can be bought for half that cost on ebay or banggood. But since I had the Gift Cards... I thought why not.
Anyway, this is just a quick review... some problems I had and why I returned it...
Anyway, this is just a quick review... some problems I had and why I returned it...
The Box is very coles homebrand. Which didn't do much to separate the functionality features from near identical products on the shelf. What did catch my attention though was the (TCP/IP) writing on the box though... So flipping it over to find out more. It appeared to show the HDMI was being sent through the network as IP packets to a remote receiver. Very interesting huh...
At $169.95 Australian Dollars though... It's not cheap, especially given that it technically runs on the same cable as the passive balun version of the extenders available on almost any china wholesale site (more on that later).
The receiver is very basic HDMI out, Ethernet, Power in and IR in... Yes Infrared repeat too.. didn't get a chance to test it, but have no reason to suspect it wouldn't work.
The transmitter is again simply HDMI in,Ethernet, Power in and IR out. Nothing really to exciting to talk about and really does show the simplicity they were going for.
Box contents are straight forward, Transmitter+Receiver... 2 x 5VDC power adaptors and a IR receiver and emitter.
A quick review
So my network at home is still in the construction phase since moving in last year. But it's pretty straight forward.
I have 3 wireless routers in a row (Living room -> Bedroom - > Kitchen/lounge) with a single gigabit link between them. It's simple in the fact that the cable run which is pseudo temporary was quick and easy to run at the time and got the network operational until I decided where all computers and network devices will settle.
At each end of the network there is a TV with HDMI inputs and a Foxtel T-Box video source in the living room and planned to display Foxtel on the TV in the Kitchen/lounge.
I connected the power and HDMI at each end, plugged in the network cable and..... Nothing...
I had display signal, but no video.. then suddenly a couple of frames then nothing again.
At each end of the network there is a TV with HDMI inputs and a Foxtel T-Box video source in the living room and planned to display Foxtel on the TV in the Kitchen/lounge.
I connected the power and HDMI at each end, plugged in the network cable and..... Nothing...
I had display signal, but no video.. then suddenly a couple of frames then nothing again.
After verifying it worked, I then plugged back in one by one the rest of my network and suddenly started having stuttering and drop outs again. Could it be the middle router? I bridged that router out with a back to back lead adapter which worked fine and no problems with the video... So the fault was upstairs in the bedroom. It wasn't until I plugged in the LAN cable for my gaming PC that the issue was apparent.
So after a quick glance through the user 'leaflet' (cause you couldn't really call it a manual...). No MAC addresses, no IP addresses, no configurable web interface... nothing. It should just plug in and work. The manufacturer insisted it could route through several devices (I presumed routers) and that up to 253 additional receivers would be able to also display the output simultaneously? Wow... sounds good right... well no, it's not.
In order for multiple devices to receive the same transmitted video without there being separate packets being sent to each device and knowing that there isn't any way to tell each device who is who and which one to send the video to. Each packet being sent by the transmitter is being done as a broadcast packet and this was where my problem was. My gaming PC was turned off, and with Wake On Lan enabled for remote power up as part of my home automation, each broadcast message was being held up being inspected and discarded by a network card in a computer which was not only turned off, but the network card is in a sleep low power mode.
Each time a broadcast packet would arrive, it would have to wake up, check the packet for the magic packet to wake on lan, then discard it before the network was free to send the next frame of video.
To prove this, I turned on the PC remotely and watched the video on the TV as the PC was booting up. Once the PC has reached the log on screen, the streaming video was once again fluid and no problems. When running, the PC network card was now in Gigabit mode and at full power spec.
So what can I do there... I can't use the HDMI extender if my computer on the network is turned off??? I could run a dedicated cable for it... but at which point I may aswell run a dedicated cable if I'm going to that trouble... or I could use ethernet over power adaptors. I have a few, and they would work okay for that purpose?
Pushing on with the testing though, the network impact wasn't huge, but would increase pings by about 40ms (roughly), but the worst came when watching for 5 minutes the audio and video would become unsync'ed.
I could handle having a second network, I could handle little quirks in broadcast packets... but unsync'ed video and audio made the device unwatchable after longer periods of streaming. Perhaps 10 or more minutes of watching before desync was frustratingly noticeable.
Picture was fine, sound was fine, but not syncing them up is a big fat no no for me.
I am returning the device despite being really cool in concept, it is executed poorly in the name of easy setup.
There are other models of similar number at JayCar (white version), I don't know if they are the same inside, or if they operate identical or are cross compatible. But suffice to say, I would avoid these kind of HDMI extenders. If you have the capacity to run additional cat5e cabling... run two more and use a passive balun for HDMI such as for the device at banggood.com
http://www.banggood.com/Wholesale-New-HDMI-Extender-Repeater-by-Cat5e-Cat6-Lan-RJ45-Cable-for-HDTV-PS3-DVD-XB360-p-42337.html
So what can I do there... I can't use the HDMI extender if my computer on the network is turned off??? I could run a dedicated cable for it... but at which point I may aswell run a dedicated cable if I'm going to that trouble... or I could use ethernet over power adaptors. I have a few, and they would work okay for that purpose?
Pushing on with the testing though, the network impact wasn't huge, but would increase pings by about 40ms (roughly), but the worst came when watching for 5 minutes the audio and video would become unsync'ed.
I could handle having a second network, I could handle little quirks in broadcast packets... but unsync'ed video and audio made the device unwatchable after longer periods of streaming. Perhaps 10 or more minutes of watching before desync was frustratingly noticeable.
Picture was fine, sound was fine, but not syncing them up is a big fat no no for me.
I am returning the device despite being really cool in concept, it is executed poorly in the name of easy setup.
There are other models of similar number at JayCar (white version), I don't know if they are the same inside, or if they operate identical or are cross compatible. But suffice to say, I would avoid these kind of HDMI extenders. If you have the capacity to run additional cat5e cabling... run two more and use a passive balun for HDMI such as for the device at banggood.com
http://www.banggood.com/Wholesale-New-HDMI-Extender-Repeater-by-Cat5e-Cat6-Lan-RJ45-Cable-for-HDTV-PS3-DVD-XB360-p-42337.html
I have two of these kits and over cat5e, managed to display with no impact on quality over 80 meters of cabling (through my work office network cabling).
This was a quick and dirty review... I couldn't find anything of any usefulness in terms of information on the product when I was purchasing, and I hope someone out there finds this of help.
Have a great day.
RamjetX
