CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

brockwood · Joined: 24 Jul 2008 Posts: 2

I am having a problem with my new home theater that I hope HDFury can solve. I want to be able to split the HDMI signal coming out of my TV cable box to two displays. I got a Gefen splitter that works great with my blue ray player. The problem is that when I try to use the splitter on the cable signal, both displays show the correct image for a couple of seconds and then go black. If I turn off either display, the other shows the picture. The Gefen folks tell me that the Motorola cable box is detecting the two displays and allows only one.

So my question is: can I use HDFury on one of the displays to eliminate the problem? That is, will HDFury fool the cable box into thinking that the display connected to the HDFury is not on?

Note that I can run the second TV now, as long as it's showing something other than the HDMI coming from the splitter. So I've been imagining (I'm clueless about the technology behind this) that the cable box is doing some kind of hand shaking with both TV's. Does HDFury eliminate the hand shaking? If so, wouldn't that solve the problem?

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 7:52 am Post subject:

NO the Motorola cable box will see the HDFury as a display.

THink of the HDFury as the input jack on the monitor without the screen. Not sure how to fix this for you??

Anyone?

Mr. Green · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:14 am Post subject:

My personal feeling would be to use the component out and an opitcal cable for the TV it's closest to and the HDMI for the other TV, you might be able to fool it by selecting which output you want to use, but I don't know much about it. This way shouldn't cost you anything (unless you don't have cables hanging around). It also won't help if you want it to output to 2 TV's at the same time.

Hang, on a second... One thing to try if you have one, is to use a receiver with 2 HDMI in's and 1 output. Then use the splitter on the receiver output. Since the cable box is feeding to the receiver it may not notice that you are splitting it after the fact.

I might have the same model. Mine's a Motorolla dual tuner (one high def) with the 160 GB hard drive. I'd be interested if you get this to work. Below is the link to my PVR and to one of 2 splitters I found on e-bay...

http://cgi.ebay.ca/1-X-2-HDMI-SPLITTER-SWITCH-AMPLIFIER-PS3-HDTV-1080P-1-3_W0QQitemZ320279650855QQihZ011QQcategoryZ73390QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

http://cgi.ebay.ca/HDMI-Male-To-2x-HDMI-Female-Splitter-Adapter-Cable-New_W0QQitemZ150276030323QQihZ005QQcategoryZ149974QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10092566&catid=24994&logon=&langid=EN

Keep us posted.
Chris

brockwood · Joined: 24 Jul 2008 Posts: 2

I did try to connect one of the TV's to the component video output from the cable box. It issued some sort of warning about an illegal operation and shut down it and the HDMI. So the guys at Motorola seem to be hell bent on not allowing me to have two displays.

I'm now looking into ditching my Charter / Motorola DVR for Tivo. I think that does not have the same issue, but their tech guy was not 100% sure (he did say though that you could hook to HDMI and component at the same time). Does anyone have any experience with splitting HDMI off Tivo?

aspec2 · Joined: 10 Apr 2006 Posts: 549

This is an HDCP issue. It thinks you are trying to do the "bridged input" record thing from VCR days. If you could fool the HDMI output with an HDCP compliant device and then "tap" the video from the HDMI output, you could record the video. The MPAA thinks you are a criminal trying to steal their stuff.

Walt

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 3:08 am Post subject:

The useless world of digital.