Customer Reviews
Junk do not buy 
2008-06-25
I bought this and it simple does not work. tried 5 different optical cables. (wanted to connect sat & ps3 to sony home theater)
Mine was defective 2008-06-25
I have years of experience from working retail (display setups at work, and personal home theater setups). I followed the simple steps. There was no sound coming through. After a sound check without this, no problems were found. When I made second attempt to re-connect I here that usual crackle of sound trying to get through. After that I simply gave up and now looking for another type with a better reputation.
GARBAGE! 2008-06-24
Mine is now in the trash. I decided to take it apart, since I know cheaply made products are usually very easy to make work.
Well I found the problem, and it can't be fixed, I tried. The problem with the design is that on the one end, the two fiber optic cables meet into one, but it is only two pieces of plastic slightly melted together to form one fiber optic, but it still remains as two and what happens is that the light does not meet up directly in the same place on the one plug end. So if your cables or receiver are extremely sensitive this product can not be salvaged. I tried re-aligning the two ends better so it made a more accurate alignment, but there is hardly any internal cable to work with. Spend the extra money on an actual switch, there is a reason why this is so cheap and the shipping so expensive.
Works great! 
2008-06-23
Works excellent, I have it hooked up as a combiner feeding Xbox and PS3 to my sound system, no issues at all! One thing I will mention is that you can't have both devices on at the same time, it's a one or the other unit, in other words not a "switch". That's the impression I got from the negative reviews on why it wouldn't work.
didn't work for me... 
2008-06-18
Very low price, build quality seems high, but it just didn't work for me. I took a chance and felt it was worth the risk, as it may have worked and saved me a ton of time.
There are no active parts, so if your devices do not have a strong enough signal it will not pass through this coupler.
Doesn't work - but it's not the item's fault 
2008-07-21
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 2008-07-12
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 2008-07-06
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 
2008-07-05
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! 2008-06-27
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.
