or rather sky box – TV1 and AV Amp2 – TV2

(could run through AV AMP1 but not sure there’s any point)

I bought an £8 HDMI splitter from ebay which seemed to work for a day but then got unreliable.

By unreliable I mean the second screen didn’t make a connection for ages unless things were repeatedly power cycled. Then the main TV was dropping the picture.

I need to try it with a proper power supply (rather than the Sky box USB port) but it also ran worryingly hot whether it was in use or not.

Has anyone got a device that works for this or do I need to shell out for an AV amp with dual HDMI outputs?

Look at products by Neet on amazon.

+1 for Neet

That looks worryingly like the same box with a different brand. I can never work out whether various bits of Chinese electronics are all the same rebranded, built by different factories to the same designs or reverse engineered and copied by another factory.

A good amount of Chinese stuff is just the same rebranded. However, sometimes whilst Product A == Product B Product A may have been through more rigorous QC.

Quite often what happens is say 1000 units are built – 200 are ‘grade A’ and company X puts their name on it, 300 are ‘grade B’ and company Y puts their name on it.

Eventually you have a 100 or so units which may or may not work and are branded company Z who noone has ever heard of and sold so cheap that if they don’t work the customer rarely bothers to send it back and when they do so much money has be saved by letting the consumer do the QC for them that they can afford to replace or refund. Occasionally the bottom of the pile items perform very well and the consumer has bagged a bargain.

This accounts for why sometimes on Amazon two very similar looking products can have quite different review ratings and the cheaper one generally has a few 4/5* ratings from those that got a good ‘un and a number of 1/2* from those that got a lemon.

^^ That’s how CPUs are branded – the highest quality ones are the top of the range models, trickling downwards.

Now I’m puzzled. Gave this another go and it’s now working again.

First time round we’d just moved in and just rigged it up to run on the USB socket on the back of the Sky box (I figured it would either give power or wouldn’t but it might not give enough).

So the HDMI box ran super hot and after the first day was unreliable. I’ve finally got around to trying it again, this time with an iPhone USB charger. It’s working and running cool

Why would it run hot when powered by the Sky box but not now? (unless it just needs 24 hours to bed in and overheat)

Insufficient amperage output – iirc, the usb on sky is for a mouse/keyboard for certain functions that are never ever activated by them.

I’d not have thought that would have caused it to get hot though? The USB was used previously for a Sky Wifi adaptor
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sky-Wireless-Connector-Demand-Straight-Black/dp/B00F97M59S

If it isn’t receiving sufficient power then it will run hot regardless.
Its all very well giving it 5V but if it needs 1A and the Sky box is only capable of giving 200mA then it will get hot as the power supply inside will overheat. Even needing 500mA is 2.5 times more than the box can supply.
Most likely then cutting out as you found previously.
The one you linked to consumes 10W – thats 2A!!
Also says that your Sky box may not work.

yes, hadn’t seen that 10w spec – that means it needs at least an iPad mini charger. If it’s consuming 10W in a box that size it’s going to run bloody hot anyway.

It says that some Sky boxes don’t deliver power over USB – mine definitely has power but obviously not enough.

Just throwing away the spec sheet for this box and it claims 500mA which is well within USB spec (and feels more likely).