A Barely Flawed Miracle
My purchase of the Orei 929 audio extractor has been, overall, miraculous. My dilemma was being stuck (I do not have unlimited funds) with a fabulous but slightly dated AV receiver, a Marantz SR7005, and an equally fabulous and slightly dated universal disc player, an Oppo BDP-95. Both were state of the art in 2011, and in most ways are unimpeachable. My TV, however, is a Samsung 6900 series capable of passing 4K content (when it is available) and of upscaling 1080p HD content to a more eye-pleasing quality. The problem was that the disc player and the Fios TV One (4K when available, 1080p otherwise) were both, logically enough, routed through the receiver, so the discs played had their 1080p video sent through the receiver to the TV -- and so did the Fios TV One box. This worked to the disc player's advantage, but cut off the Fios signal to the TV at 1080p. By using Orei's little black box audio extractor I have been able to route the Fios Dolby DIgital + to the receiver and the (sometimes) 4K video signal to the TV. The difference has been like night and day for cable programming. Especially stunning was the first TCM showing of In the Heat of the Night, which had never looked so alive and vivid before. Some tweaking of settings in the Oppo also improved the 1080p signal being sent to the TV (which, again, can at least improve that content, perhaps up to 2K). It is the TV signal improvement that is staggering, thanks of course in part to the TV's upscaling, and Orei's making it possible to route the cable signal directly to the TV instead of through the receiver, while diverting the audio to the receiver. The one slight drawback here is that the video and audio of the cable signal are being handled by two different devices, so lip motion isn't synched very well and sometimes looks weird. It's overshadowed by the vastly improved picture displayed, but if I could improve the lip synchrony I would truly be in hog heaven. As it is, everything is so much better I can hardly stand it. The Orei unit is built like a military grade instrument and works perfectly. Setup was quite simple and easy, and operation is flawless. Purchase of the device directly from Orei was a snap and customer service has been first rate. I could hardly be happier. I'd recommend this solution to anyone in my situation (stuck with just slightly dated but very high quality audio equipment and a 4K TV). Bravo!
