Both products work similarly, and perform a simple function. The Iogear 4 Port Switch includes a single button on the front for cycling through input sources. You can also change ports with the included remote control; it allows you to choose inputs directly (by pressing the input number) or by using Up and Down buttons. Blue lights across the face of the box indicate which port is currently active. It’s not easy to distinguish, say, light 2 from light 3 at a glance in a dark room, but at least your TV’s picture provides a hint.

XtremeMac’s Xtreme HD is unique in that it’s the same size, shape, and overall design as an Apple TV, so you can stack the latter on top of the former for a neater AV cabinet. Easy-to-read lighted numbers on the front of the box indicate the active input. Like the Iogear switch, the Xtreme HD includes a remote control with numbered buttons for each port; on the other hand, it doesn’t provide Up/Down buttons. It too includes a button on the front (labeled “Source”) for switching input sources.

With many HD sets having at most 2 HDMI inputs more is always better. Both of the switches in the review are over $100 though… Too bad they didn’t include some of the nifty cheap switches at Monoprice.

Matt Brinkhoff

Listen don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer, but you have to admit it’s quite an undertaking, the whole premise of going to existing bandwidth suppliers (Digital CATV and Direct Broadcast Satellite) with the goal of piggybacking on their networks, to deliver content to those same customer’s, sounds a little far fetched.

Lets say your Apple (lucky you) and I’m oh say Comcast (yay I’m rich) you say, we’d like about 10 to 15% of your current bandwidth please. Of course I’ll sit there and wait for the punch line, I might even try to crack a joke and say you need to download something big? Yeah that’s a silly analogy, but my point remains, where’s the benefit for those with the big data pipes? Which gets me to the point, I know, about time.

Those of us, who live in the real world, understand that such an arrangement would boil down to cold hard cash. Of course Apple has it, but why spend it? If I had to take the magic eight ball approach here, I’d say that this content delivery mechanism will become a reality, but not quite as fast or with the same depth that some are predicting. Even with H.264 a hi-def movie would be well over today’s 6 or 7 gigabytes that a standard definition DVD takes up.

Can you really see a system that takes many hours worth of downloading at current speeds and takes up 5 to 10% of the average hard drive’s space as a viable approach to deliver one movie? I might be a little narrow sighted here, but I don’t see it given current compression schemes and typical end user connection speeds. Which is why I’m perplexed, it’s the technical issues around the premise that have me scratching my head, not Apple’s potential in pulling it off.

B.Greenway

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