Nyrius Aries Home HDMI Digital Wireless Transmitter & Receiver for HD 1080p Video Streaming, Cable Box, Satellite, Bluray, DVD, PS3, PS4, Laptops, PC (NAVS500)

I purchased this item after carefully researching and weighing all the available options for HDMI transmission over the large distance in our theatre. Those included Dual Cat 6e Baluns, Fiber-Optic Convertors, and Wireless HDMI transmitter/receiver pairs. I would warn anyone trying to use the first option in a public theatre because the cable length limitation (usually only 100') is just not long enough if you want the Blu-Ray/DVD player located on the stage or projection booth with the projector suspended in the ceiling typically in a 1000 to 3000 seat venue for front projection. In addition, those cables cannot be run parallel to AC lines or in a high RF environment (such as a place where many lighting dimmer circuits are used, well DUH, it's a theatre and that's the normal lighting usage) and it states that quite clearly in the manual. Our projector is hung from a balcony rail with lots of AC runs on it and the Cat 6e Balun didn't work AT ALL despite having both Cat 6e runs of identical length, using high quality well-terminated ends, and avoiding AC lines. I looked into a Fiber-Optic convertor interface. At almost $1,200, it was just too expensive. Enter the Nyrius Aries NAVS500 unit. At $200 it seemed like a good (reasonably) affordable choice... if it worked. After reading all the reviews, I decided to give it a try. I wasn't disappointed. Many of the negative reviews cited the unit not working right out of the box. That's fair enough. It seems like a quality-control issue at worst. The company should work on that. I was able to purchase a refurbished unit at a discount so I figured it had been gone over and tested thoroughly before I got it. I initially hooked up my top-of-the-line Oppo Digital BP-83 Blu-Ray player (which normally syncs perfectly to my HD home theatre projector) and it didn't work! The Sanyo XL-FP42 (8K Lumen) projector displayed a sync rate of 480P with a nasty stripe through the middle of an unwatchable picture. I was crestfallen until I discovered much later why that had happened. My co-worker had a much cheaper Samsung Blu-Ray (around $300) and it was able to sync at 720P. We were making progress but still not quite at our goal of 1080i, the projector's highest supported rate. Just for giggles we hooked up the theatre's very cheap ($150) Samsung Blu-Ray player and to our surprise and delight, the projector synched to it INSTANTLY at 1080i! We couldn't believe it. We played an entire movie and the link never failed or lost sync once. It was incredible and ironic. The cheapest player performed the best! At first we decided to place that Blu-Ray player within 25' of the projector with no obstructions. When we got the el cheapo Samsung player to sync, we moved it to the stage where we normally set it up (through a much lower-res interface). This is an as-the-crow-flies distance of approximately 90' with a big CONCRETE AND STEEL proscenium wall in the direct line-of-sight between them. We fired everything up and it again synched at 1080i and stayed there with no glitches. Unbelievable! We then decided to go for broke. I had the head electrician fire up EVERY lighting circuit dimmer in the building. Several hundred RF-pumping, EMF-saturating, mega-interference-generating AC runs soaked the ether. The picture looked perfect and stayed that way despite our constantly changing the levels of the lights in an attempt to disrupt the link. We were ready to use it for a real show. The next week we tested everything successfully and a few days later we used the Nyrius ARIES NAVS500 for a live event where a movie was the centerpiece. It worked perfectly and we are now cautiously confident that we've got a winner. I will update this review as we do more shows (we don't use the projector on a daily or even weekly basis), so stay tuned. I suspect (but haven't fully tested the hypothesis) that the synching protocol between Blu-Ray players and the Nyrius ARIES NAVS500 differs greatly from player to player. I want to set my Oppo Blu-Ray to 1080i instead of "Auto" and see if I can get it to sync at that rate. I also would like to do the same with my co-worker's mid-priced Samsung Blu-Ray. And I would like to test a few other players for good measure. I will perform these experiments soon and revise this review accordingly. I would HIGHLY recommend anyone using this unit in a public theatre to have several Blu-Ray players on hand because of this issue. In addition, I would use the shortest possible HDMI cables to get into and out of the Nyrius units. That's just good practice. This unit gets two enthusiastic thumbs up from me despite it not working with two out of three players we tested it with. That question will be resolved one way or another. Here is some last advice: Turn on the receiver FIRST, then turn on the transmitter, then the Blu-Ray, and finally turn on the projector. Do not disconnect the HDMI connection when it has synched because it may not re-synch. If you do happen to disconnect it, power down the transmitter, hook the HDMI back up and power the transmitter back up again. That solved it for me. Thanks for making a good workable unit Nyrius!

Pros: Amazon side was great with ordering through delivery. Installation of both transmitter and receiver was simple, picture illustrations only, connected transmitter to Dish satellite receiver, and I used velcro to attach Nyrus receiver to top of TV (flat screen edge) to enable IR window to face viewer -- TV is mounted high on wall with pull down mount (mantle mount). Recvr and xmitter connected immediately after powering both on and VOILA! great picture and sound. Cons: Dish remote does not work via the Nyrius system. Remote works directly to Dish receiver when line of sight is achieved from other room, but get behind wall and nothing. Put remote right in the face of Nyrius receiver, nothing. So, to turn Dish receiver on and off, change channels, use the Guide, etc., I must get up and achieve line of sight with Dish receiver. Trouble-shooting procedures are only available on line at nyrius.com/support, and topics are fixed with minimal procedures. I tried pairing the receiver to the transmitter (did not need to do this initially as they paired automatically) but did it as a possibility, and it seemed a pretty simple procedure. Units failed to pair, no video or sound, took multiple re-pairing attempts to get video and sound back, but remote for Dish would still not work. Went through all the monkey motions of turning ALL devices off/on, plugging/unplugging, etc. So, the Nyrius system achieved 50% of what I was trying to do (provides video and sound), but I could have done this with an extra long HDMI cable (Dish receiver to TV) and co-axial cable (from wall to Dish receiver position in same room as TV) and put the box in the same room for $20 and still had . Was hoping to go wireless to the TV from the Dish Receiver. So, it does send video/sound wireless, but remote does not work with system. UPDATE (3/22) Initially gave it 2 stars, but changing to one star as the second day the system failed to transmit video or sound and nothing was touched from the previous day other than turning the TV off that previous night. I did not even try to bother with it as I was fed up from the previous days frustration in not getting the Dish remote to work, so disassembled and repacked it for return. The possibility exists that I have a bad transmitter, but I am returning the system and going with wired as unsightly as it is, it works and is totally reliable.

Bought this item as "used", but there are no signs of usage and no defects. Set up is easy and it works beautifully. Only problems are: 1. The transmitter cannot be inserted onto the stand properly, it does not align with the stand (see photo). I fear the clips may break if I force attach them. 2. There is occasional disconnection or poor connection (resulting in garbled audio & video). Uplugging and replugging (reboot) will have the problem resolved. Mind you though, the transmitter and receiver are in the same room facing each other with less than 20 feet in between.

This would have got five stars as the unit works exactly as expected. However the quality control of the manufacturer needs to be questioned. The sender and receiver both need to be powered by 5V transformers, each has a different connection one bayonet and on mini usb. The supplied transformers in the box were both fitted with usb connections. As I had taken the unit to my holiday home in Spain in was impractical to return it. Therefore I had to solder a connection to the power lead of one of the transformers. Very annoying. Maybe a one off or perhaps a whole batch have the same packaging error. Performance wise the unit is excellent, plug in and play avoiding wires all over my wall.

transmitter wouldn't pair

Works pretty well, but to move the TV outside I had to leave the door open a crack, or the signal was distorted. It worked well from the satellite receiver to the basement however. One complaint is the units themselves are very tippy, so I taped them to the tv to keep them upright.

Fitted a TV to bedroom wall that had been recently decorated and no way to get any signal to it via a cable as at opposite side of house. So I looked at a variety of options and this seemed the best in order to give the great HD picture I wanted to have. I initially plugged this into a USB port on my TV and it was a very laggy system slow to get connected and not responding to remote commands. So, I plugged into a power socket to use full power from provided adapter and it worked fantastically! For information I managed a connection through a ceiling and two solid brick walls, but ended moving the system to my second sky box that is one ceiling and one wall away and this is working very well. Worth the cost as it really does do what it says on the tin! To tidy cables and reduce number of cables going up to my TV, I used a 4 way extension lead to put power behind TV, then used an Anker USB hub to power this from a USB lead along with my Amazon fire stick, removing the need for the chunky power adapters that would not fit in the gap behind my TV.