HDJuiceBox – HDMI Video Transmitter

If you want to watch the same film, or tv channel on other televisions or screens in your house, your choice has been somewhat limited and not entirely satisfactory. The common solution is to buy an HDMI splitter box, a long HDMI cable and run from the source to the screen – a solution that is rarely easy. When you consider that longer cable runs often need a higher quality cable, it can also get quite expensive.

The HD juice Box attempts to solve that problem by:

• Sending the video and audio signal through the existing plugs and electrical circuit in your house
• Allowing you control of the source using the remote control

The concept is similar to using the common and popular HomePlugs for data connections at home, the only difference is the often larger bandwidth requirements of video and audio, and the fact that signal problems need to be reduced to an absolute minimum for it to be acceptable.

The HDJuiceBox in Action

The HDJuiceBox comes with a receiver, transceiver, a credit card sized remote control and the necessary cables including HDMI cables. Setting the system up is straightforward – simply connect the transceiver box via HDMI to your source (this can be your DVD or Blu-ray player, or your Sky or Freeviewbox) and the receiver box by HDMI to the screen in the other room. Both boxes can then be connected to a mains power socket and powered on.

When we tested the device there was a delay of a few minutes whilst the two devices connected, but when they did, the resulting picture quality was surprisingly good. We tried with both DVD and Blu-ray discs, and the colour reproduction and sharpness on both was virtually indistinguishable from the original.

With both televisions on at the same time, the HDJuiceBox seemed to be just as happy as it was when powering one, and there was no quality degradation. In fact the system is expandable so you can add an extra one or two receiver boxes if you want to view the output on additional screens.

Additional Features

The other nice feature is the inclusion of the remote control and extender cable – this makes the whole system really usable and allows you to control the source device from wherever the receiver box is placed. This involves plugging in an additional cable to the transceiver box which has an ‘IR Blaster’ on the other end to output the original remote controls button push to the Blu-ray player, or whatever you are controlling.

The boxes themselves come in a matt black finish and are simply styled and fairly non-descript. Whilst generic valium images they aren’t particularly attractive, this type of device is more likely to be hidden away than on display so it shouldn’t matter too much. They are solid and well made though, and the construction quality should mean they stand the test of time, and perhaps a few knocks along the way.