Have you ever bought a media player or DVD or Blu-ray player and then wondered what you’d have to unplug in order to get it to work? I know I have.

My TV is a 1080p Samsung that’s a few years old. It’s biggest drawback is that it only has one HDMI port. So I’d be constantly reaching back into my entertainment center, behind my devices to unplug the cable from my Xbox and put it into my NVIDIA Shield, or my Blu-ray player.

It was getting pretty annoying, until I found the Fosmon HDMI switch.

I’ve mentioned the Fosmon HD8061 before, in my article on the Android TV box accessories that I use everyday, but I wanted to give you a quick little write-up on why this little $25 device has saved me a ton of time and aggregation.

First, though, I want to briefly get into the difference between an HDMI splitter and an HDMI switch.

HDMI Splitter vs Switch

I won’t go into too much detail, but I want to stress that there’s a big difference between an HDMI splitter and an HDMI switch. It all depends on which way the signal is travelling and what you want to do with it.

Here’s the basic difference: An HDMI splitter will take one source (Blu-ray, TV box, DVD player, PlayStation, etc.) and send that signal out to multiple devices – splitting it. An HDMI switch will take multiple sources and connect them all to a single display (TV or monitor) and switch back and forth between them.

This is an important distinction. When I first started looking at ways to connect more devices to the one-and-only-one HDMI port on my TV, I almost bought the wrong thing.

Just remember this: If you want to watch the same content on multiple devices at the same time, you want a splitter. If you want to connect all of your devices to your TV and you don’t have enough ports, then you need a switch.

HD1831 vs HD8061

Fosmon has a lot of different switches and splitters, but I’m going to focus on two of them specifically: the HD1831 and HD8061.

Both of these are “pigtail” switches that will allow three devices to be hooked up to one of your HDMI TV connections.  For the record, using a cordless drill to unscrew the bolts I had to hunt for a few minutes to find out what a pigtail cable was. A pigtail cable is a cable that has a connector or port on one end and loose wires on the other. If it were smaller, we’d probably call it a ‘dongle’. It’s the same principle.

The main difference between the Fosmon HD8061 and the HD1831 is whether you want to be able to support 4K devices, or high-end audio formats like Dolby Digital or DTS. If so, you’ll need to spend the extra money on the HD8061. Otherwise, the Fosmon HD1831 is a 3-port switch for right around $12 which does the job nicely.

Personally, I chose to go with the higher-end Fosmon HD8061, which costs about $25 on Amazon.com. Even though my living room TV isn’t 4K right now, I know we’ll be buying a new television in the next few months. This makes it a little “future-proof” and means I can watch my 4K content down the road without buying another adapter.

The Fosmon HD8061 has a braided outer cable which is going to be more durable than a normal cable. There are three indicator lights on the top, as well as a manual selector switch.

Fosmon HDMI Switch HD8061 Specs

• 3 HDMI inputs / 1 HDMI output
• Supports 12-bit Deep color per channel; maximum of 36-bits across all channels
• Supports 3D devices
• Supports up to 4K resolutions
• Supports HDCP pass-through
• Supports a total TMDS throughput of 8.91Gbps max
• Supports uncompressed audio such as LPCM
• Supports compressed audio such as DTS Digital, Dolby Digital, DTS-HS and Dolby TrueHD

Fosmon HDMI Switch HD1831 Specs

• 3 HDMI inputs / 1 HDMI output
• Supports 12-bit Deep color per channel; maximum of 36-bits across all channels
• Supports 3D devices
• Supports up to 1080p resolutions (1920 x 1080p)
• Supports HDCP pass-through
• Supports 2.5Gbps/250MHz per channel, maximum bandwidth per display is 7.5Gbps
• Supports uncompressed audio such as LPCM
• Supports compressed audio such as DTS Digital, Dolby Digital, DTS-HS and Dolby TrueHD
• 24k gold-plated connector
• Devices that require HDCP 2.2 or higher may be incompatible

Hooking up the Fosmon HD8061

Setup was a no-brainer. Seriously. I usually think that hooking up TV boxes is pretty easy, but this takes it to another level.

There’s no power cord to plug in, no extra cables needed except for the ones you’ve already got plugged into your devices. There’s not even an on-off switch.

Everything is automatic.

The long cable end gets plugged into your television. The cables from your devices get plugged in to the ports marked “Input 1”, “Input 2” and “Input 3.” In my case, the cables were from my Blu-ray player, my NVIDIA Shield and my old Xbox 360.

That’s it. Once the cables are plugged in and the devices turned on, you should see one of the three green lights illuminate showing that the signal is making its way to the television.

How does it work?

The Fosmon HD8061 has a manual Select switch on the top, which will let you manually switch back and forth between devices. But, you shouldn’t need to use it very often because the automatic signal switching is just that good.

Let me give you an example of how it works.

Say you sit down and turn on your TV and your Blu-ray player. The HDMI switch sees that there’s power coming through your Blu-Ray cable and it activates that port and sends the signal to your TV. You realize that you don’t really want to go find a movie and load it in your Blu-ray player, so you put that remote down, without turning off the player. You then turn on your NVIDIA Shield TV to find something on Kodi.

Now you’ve got two devices on at the same time. How does the automatic switching decide which signal to send to your TV?

The Fosmon HDMI switch gives priority to whatever device you powered on last. So in this example, because the last thing you turned on was the Shield, that’s what it assumes you want to watch.

The Verdict

Every now and then I come across an accessory that just makes something easier…simpler…less work. The Fosmon HD8061 is one of those accessories.

I don’t want to be too dramatic here, but I wasted so much time reaching into my entertainment center and fishing for the HDMI cable so I could change which device was plugged into my TV. Not only am I saving time, but I literally don’t have to think about switching devices at all.

Seriously. I would have been happy manually switching the signal myself. The automatic signal switching was just a bonus.

If you’re struggling to plug in more devices than you have HDMI ports, you should seriously think about getting an HDMI switch. For $25, you really can’t go wrong with the Fosmon HD8061.

Find the Fosmon HD1831 and HD8061 HDMI switched at Amazon.com