Nyrius ARIES Pro Digital Wireless HDMI Transmitter and Receiver System

The Aries Pro by Nyrius solves the problem of wires... meaning how can you get an HD signal from your laptop, Tivo, game station, or other device to your HD TV wirelessly. There are times you want to do this to reduce the clutter around your television, but other times you may want to place your television in a spot that puts it out of reach of a cable box, laptop, or other devices.

The Aries Pro is a simple and elegant solution that works especially well with laptops (especially PCs.... you may need to buy an adapter for your Mac) that have an HDMI output (And again... many Macs do not have HDMI outputs.... although there are solutions... more on that later). With the Aries pro you simple plug the HDMI stick (about 50% bigger than a normal flash drive) into your HDMI output and then connect a USB power source into the side of the stick (for power). Next you connect the HDMI receiver onto the back of your television (a velcro mounting system is included), power it up using the included AC adapter, connect the IR cable, and then plug it into the HDM input on your tv... an voila .... your done! No software or computer interface is needed!

Notes

I mentioned that you do not need to do anything to your computer in terms of software. Depending on the make and model you may need to select the proper HDMI output to send the signal to the Aries Pro.

Range is stated to be 160 feet (About 50 meters), and this is likely true if you have a clean line of sight between your receiver and transmitter. As for me, I was unable to get a signal from my downstairs to my upstairs TV. The distance is 60' to 70' but the signal needed to pass through our floor and two rooms.

Latency - no delay or drag was ever experienced. The audio and video were perfectly synced even when watching a program in 1080P 3D.

Video playback was nearly perfectly at 1080P in 2D.... although I did get a small bursts of line fuzz/blur about every 30-60 seconds when using it in 1080P 3D. At first it was a minor distraction, but within 5 minutes or so I forgot that it was occurring.

Audio Playback - Perfect using Dolby 5.1 playback

Set-up - pretty straight forward.... the directions are simple - plan about 10 minutes

One cool feature is that each receiver (which you mount to the back of your television) can support up to 8(!) transmitters. Meaning that you can have a transmitter on your Tivo, PlayStation 3, Blu Ray Player, and so on while using just one Aries Pro Receiver. Another way this comes in handy is that the Aries Pro will allow you to run 8 devices through a single HDMI input on your television. This is especially important if you are mounting your television on a wall and or/above a mantle.

A small but useful remote control is included. The remote is needed for set-up and to toggle between HDMI transmitters.

Use with Mac - there are two ways to do this. One is to buy a USB to HDMI (Female) adapter for your Mac (which I have never used) this should allow you to send audio and video from your Mac to your TV. The second option (which is the one I use) is to buy a much cheaper Monitor-out to HDMI (female) adapter this bascially allows you to use your television a giant monitor. The only negative is that the monitor-out does NOT support audio play-back. I solve this by either using one of three things .... a Bluetooth speaker connected to my mac, a USB audio transmitter - like the one made by Bose, or to use the headphone auxiliary output with a nice set of computer speakers or ipod dock.

Final Verdict - I am very tempted to give the Aries Pro a 5 star recommendation... the only reason why I am knocking off 1 star is due to the range being less than 160'' (for those of us who have less than clear line of sight) and the slight fuzz when using the Aries Pro for 3D playback. I still recommend the product, and if you are not concerned with the range or 3D you can consider it a 5 star product.

4 to 4 1/2 Stars

5 Stars if you have clear line of sight and you are not interested in 3D playback

Note - I received this product for reviewing purposes

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