Accessories

Doesn't work - but it's not the item's fault
I bought this as a "switch" to use the optical out from both my cable box and PC sound card on the single optical input of my sound receiver.

Unfortunately there's a problem with this - my cable box (Comcast) does not turn off it's optical port even when the box itself turned off. As a result I do not get sound from my PC with the cable box still plugged in to the splitter. However, the PC does turn off the optical port when it's turned off so I do sound from the cable box when both are plugged in. That doesn't really help me, but it does let me know that the splitter is functional.

If you plan to buy this as a switch between two sources, make sure that you check that your devices actually turn off their optical outputs when the device itself is turned off. It's easy enough to check this just by looking at the end of the optical cable, if it's lit up red, the optical output is still on.

Looks like I'll have to by a "real" switch.

PEOPLE THAT SAY IT DOESNT WORK ARE WRONG
I've read a few of the bad reviews on this item and they all seem to be user error. One reviewer says that his optical cable just falls out of the switch. Thats because he didnt lock the cable in. It takes a little bit of effort to just push the optical cable in all the way then its locked in. Some reviewers say it doesnt work. Thats probably because they didnt lock the optical cables in place. I have my HD DVD player and my PS3 connected at the same time and it works perfectly (as long as only one device is turned on).

Doesn't Work
I've tried this product and it simply doesn't work, the audio would not go through the device. Purchased a powered unit that works excellent wouldn't recommend purchasing this item.

Worked great, died after 4 months
I am using a Logitech Z-5500 sound system which has one optical input. I was trying to decide what to do to connect both my Playstation 3 & XBox 360 to it, and this was the trinket I used.
It worked great. I bought it the first week of Feb 08, but on July 4 it started shorting out while playing music through my PS3. I will be replacing it.
Pros: No need to manually swap cables, no noticeable quality loss, small and compact, visually pleasing, no need to manually set input, cheap but effective.
Cons: Will only work on one stream - I couldn't have my 360 & PS3 on at the same time, otherwise sound would only come out of whatever I turned on first - really isn't a con - but died after 5 months usage, however cheap to replace.

Does exactly what I need!
I bought this to use as a combiner (switch) because I had two audio devices outputting optical digital audio, but my AV receiver only had one digital audio input. I specifically didn't want a device with a manual switch because I didn't want to have to manually adjust that switch on top of already changing my TV input every time I wanted to go from watching TV to playing Xbox 360, or vice versa.

This device works perfectly for my application! Both of my audio sources go into the end with two inputs, and my AV receiver is hooked up to the end with one input (which I guess would make it an output?). If my Xbox 360 is outputting audio, the AV receiver plays that audio. If my cable box is outputting audio, the receiver plays that audio. The only caveat is that one of the devices *MUST* be turned off and not emitting any signal, because if the device is receiving two signals at once, nothing will come out of the receiver (as the signal will be a garbage combination of both inputs). This is fine for me, however, as I can easily have my cable box or Xbox off if I'm using the other device.

I see this product seems to have a lot of mixed reviews, and a lot of people claiming it doesn't work. It could have something to do with product defects, but mine seemed to be constructed well enough. Another problem I could foresee is that you need to make sure, if you're using this as a combiner, that only one audio source is being inputted to it at a time! Even if some devices are off, they could still be sending some kind of signal through the output (which you can easily tell by looking at the optical audio jack when it's off and seeing if its still got that red glow). To put it simply, if you got two audio signals going through, nothing will come out of this.

I also couldn't be happier with the price of this, especially when compared to the ridiculously priced switches that also include HDMI inputs and whatnot.