eSynic IR Signal Extenders

I keep my Sky HD box and BluTay player in a cupboard under my tv so, rather obviously, nothing on the remote works when the doors are shut. My simple solution up 'till now has been to leave a door open, but that doesn't look great, so I looked around for a solution. I was expecting to find a product that would require me to route another cable through my access hole in the top of the cupboard, which would typically mean getting my drill out and making the hole bigger, but I stumbled across this natty device. It has the usual stick-on receiver 'eye' and an infra red transmitter to get the attention of the boxes in the cupboard, but it performs a rather neat trick of using my existing HDMI cable to connect the receiver to the transmitter. So no extra cable to route through my cupboard, no need to get my drill out and connecting it only took 5 minutes. Best of all it works brilliantly! I normally sit about 4 metres away from my tv, but I could be as far as 7 metres if I sat in the corner. As long as the receiver is in direct line of sight, ie little green light facing me, it responds to my Sky remote instantly. I'm very pleased with this product, it's great to find something that is innovative and works first time. Did I mention the little green light? It's small and dim so it doesn't catch your eye when you're watching at night and it flashes red when you press a button on the remote so you know it's working, which is handy when you first set it up.My only nit-picking comment would be the self-adhesive receiver. This is a common problem across all these devices and it may be just me, but I really don't want to stick it to the front of my tv. I'm okay with sticking it on the bottom of the tv bezel though. This would have the green light pointing down, which isn't a problem, but the effective range of the remote to tv distance is reduced. My solution is to make a small right angle bracket to fix to the bottom of the tv. If this manufacturer had inclued a tiny bracket I would have given them 6 stars !!!

I wanted to put all of our home cinema equipment in a cupboard so needed a way to re-transmit the IR remotes. I was a bit dubious that this would work, but it has turned out to be exactly what I needed.POSITIVES:1. No need for an external power supply, it gets power from the HDMI socket.2. Minimal wiring (as it uses the HDMI lead to transmit the signal)3. Simple (plug it in and it just works)4. Compact (it doesn't take up space behind a wall mounted TV that's very close to the wall.5. The beam from the transmitter seems strong enough - I've put it on top of one the boxes pointing at the cupboard door so that it reflects to all of the devices in the cupboard.NEGATIVES:1. The IR receiver isn't the best looking thing I've ever seen - it's perhaps a bit larger than it needs to be. I did try putting it hidden behind the TV and it still picked up IR signals bounced off the wall, but not as reliably as if you have line of sight.2. The IR receiver has an led on it that glows green all the time to let you know that it's on, (it blinks red when receiving an IR signal). I'd prefer if it didn't have the green led on all the time.3. A single IR transmitter might not work for everyone depending on how many devices you have in a cupboard and the feasibility of bouncing the signal to them.Summary: For the money, it was worth a try, and after a few days of use I'm very pleased with the result

So bulky with the connection at the side of this it doesn't fit in any modern device. Especially if the TV is wall mounted. You could use this with short hdmi male to female tails. However that is pretty much academic because it doesn't work anyway. Connected it up with 'ir' setting as it says in the instructions. The Led flashes on the receiver which suggests it is getting a signal, however this never gets retransmitted. Both hdmi units have 'rx' written on them (don't know if this is right and one should be 'tx'). Tried them both ways round, tried changing from ir to cec. No luck. Went to pull it out of the sky box the second time and it came apart in my hands. Had to try to put the hdmi shield back on and clip it back together. I guess you get what you pay for so it may be value for money if it was free.

I purchased this product and found it was easy to set up. However there are some pitfalls. The IR receiver and IR transmitter plug into the side of the the female HDMI ports making ‘the bit’ that plugs into your sky box or TV very bulky. To use this product I have had to remove the Ethernet cable from my sky box because the IR transmitter being plugged into the side of the female HDMI port is now in the way of the Ethernet port on the sky box. I tried to use the HDMI cable with my DVD player instead but the HDMI port on the DVD player is narrow and compact and the the product is far too bulky to plug in there.The other problem I had is getting the product to work. Working through the FAQs/trouble shooting took a long while but eventually I found the IR receiver would not work close to my TV (presumably interference). I had to move the IR receiver to a significant distance from the TV screen but the cable is only so long.Once I overcame these issues the product works ok. The IR transmitter is positioned in the cupboard so that it operates both my DVD player and sky box which is really useful. Ultimately I’ve got a tidy look to the living room thanks to this product but it hasn’t been so straight forward to install and use.