Does a bidirectional hdmi switcher cause an latency?

[Jerry_61]

I recently just bought a monitor with 1 hdmi port but I want to connect my laptop and PS4 without moving cables back and forth. I just purchased this switcher https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00LFX1UDM/ref=ya_aw_od_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and was wondering if this would cause any input lag or degrade the quality?

 

[greens]

Nope, no latency at all.

Digital signals don't degrade like that, so no to that too!

 

[Jerry_61]

Hey greens. You show up a lot for my questions and I would like to thank you for that because you provide so much information. Also some people say a splitter degrades quality regardless of it being a digital signal. Or does it not matter regardless of it being a switch or a splitter because like you said digital signals don't degrade like that?

 

[greens]

I like to respond to the fresh ones, we must have similar hours!

In theory it COULD, but only in the same way that an extremely long HDMI cable will also eventually lose the signal. The splitter just adds slightly more "length" to your cable.

One thing it won't do is become distorted/degraded. What will happen is it will cut out completely black, and recover. or it will be completely black all the time. Digital signals either work or they don't, and will never appear fuzzy, distorted, etc, due to cable length.

 

[greens]

Oh! If you do encounter that situation an HDMI amplifier/repeater will clear it up. They boost the signal so it is strong enough for the extra length.