Dr HDMI 4K — 18Gbps EDID Manager & HDMI Emulator

Fix the HDMI problem, don't replace the gear

Before a single pixel moves, your source reads the EDID of whatever is plugged in and decides what it is allowed to send. If that EDID is wrong, missing, or comes from the weakest device in the chain, you get a black screen, no HDR, or stereo where Atmos should be.

The Dr HDMI 4K sits between the source and everything after it, and ends that conversation on your terms. Forty EDID banks on one rotary switch: tell any source exactly what it is connected to, fix handshakes and HDR, keep a player awake, and push a clean signal fifty metres down a cable — from a box the size of a matchbox.

Forty EDID banks on a single dial

The banks are laid out as five tables of eight, and the LED colour tells you which table you are in. Hold the dial to cycle the tables, push up or down for the eight banks inside, pause a second, and the unit activates the EDID and fires a clean hot-plug event so the source reconfigures itself. All forty are printed on the unit, so you never need a manual in your hand at the rack.

• Blue — FHD. Eight factory presets for 1080p, 1080i, 720p and 480p, for capping a source or feeding older gear.
• Green — UHD, full audio. Eight UHD video modes advertising every audio format, Atmos and DTS:X included.
• Yellow — UHD, SPDIF limited. The same video modes with audio capped at what an SPDIF return or an older receiver can carry.
• Red — UHD, stereo. The same video modes, two channels only, for chains where anything else drops out.
• White — custom. Seven banks you write yourself, plus one that always holds the EDID copied from your own display.

Green, yellow and red carry identical video modes — only the advertised audio differs. Start on green and step down only if the sound drops out. Going one bank lower takes two seconds, instead of another evening of swapping cables.

What it does, in practice

• Ends black screens and "no signal". One clean, fixed EDID and a proper hot-plug event, so the source configures itself once and stays configured — no matter how confused the answer from a receiver, a matrix or a long cable run was.
• Restores 4K HDR through an AV receiver or soundbar. Put the unit in front of the source and what the receiver in the middle claims stops mattering.
• Unlocks full lossless audio the TV never advertised. Pick a green FULLAUDIO bank and the source offers TrueHD and DTS-HD MA again, even when the display's own EDID only mentions Dolby Digital.
• Forces HDR — or deliberately hides it. Advertise BT.2020 and HDR and the source sends it. Or pick a bank without those flags so a projector gets SDR the player has already tone mapped, instead of HDR it cannot do justice.
• Enables Dolby Vision on displays that lack it. Load an LLDV-capable EDID into a custom bank and an Apple TV 4K, Shield or player switches to player-led Dolby Vision. The projector needs a forced HDR mode, and the maximum luminance is set inside the EDID — the community EDID collection on the product site has ready-made files.
• Keeps HTPC and NUC desktops intact. HTPC mode hides the sink status, so Windows never notices the TV went off, keeps its resolution and leaves the desktop icons where they were.
• Keeps a source awake, permanently. Media players, signage boxes and headless machines held in a defined state with a live output, whether a display is switched on or not.
• Makes consoles and monitors agree. Advertise a mode a gaming monitor does not offer by itself — 1080p120, for instance, or one that reports HDR and ALLM.
• Caps what a source is allowed to send. Limit output to 1080p, 1080i, 720p or 4K30 for older projectors, capture cards, video-over-IP extenders and second zones.
• Rescues long cable runs. Input equalisation stretches signal integrity to 50 metres, and the +5V injector powers active and optical cables the source cannot drive on its own.
• Gives a whole installation one EDID. Feed matrices, splitters and switches the same fixed EDID on every branch, instead of whatever the last display connected happened to negotiate.
• Clones a display you already trust. One press of copy sink reads the EDID from your working TV into bank 8, ready to reuse anywhere in the chain.

Built for installers as much as for living rooms

• 18Gbps with 0ms latency. Full 600MHz single-link bandwidth, HDMI 2.0b compliant, nothing added in the signal path. 4K 3840×2160 at 60Hz 4:4:4 passes without losing sync.
• HDCP passes through untouched. The unit sniffs the DDC packets and filters only the EDID requests, so protected sources keep playing while you change what they are told. Fully HDCP compliant.
• Emulator and repeater in one. It answers as a display when there is no display, and reclocks and cleans the incoming signal before passing it on.
• Custom EDID banks over USB. The Windows utility reads the EDID out of the unit, writes any of the seven custom banks, and saves and loads .bin files. Edit them further in AW EDID Editor or MonInfo — a known-good file saves you an evening the next time you rebuild the rack.
• RS232 built in. Switch banks remotely from a control system without touching the unit, which is the whole point once one ends up in a rack you cannot reach.
• Optional GoBlue dongle adds Bluetooth and infrared control from Android, iOS and a remote.
• USB upgradable and flashable from any Windows machine, with all firmware releases kept online.
• Lip sync and CEC pass through untouched, so ARC control and audio delay keep working exactly as before.

Set up in three steps

1. Put it in the chain. HDMI in from the source, HDMI out towards the display, receiver, matrix or extender. On a long run, place it at the source end so the cable equalisation and the +5V injector work in your favour.
2. Power it. Connect the supplied USB adaptor to the mini USB port. With a supply attached it passes that power downstream to an active cable as well.
3. Turn the dial. The LED colour confirms the table, the number confirms the bank. Pause a second and it is live.

No menus, no configuration, no computer required. A Windows PC is only needed if you want to write your own EDID into a bank or update the firmware.

Manual, firmware, EDID files and full documentation

Everything for this unit lives on the dedicated product site, www.drhdmi4k.com:

• Full user manual — connecting, the five EDID tables, choosing banks, copying a display's EDID, custom banks, firmware and troubleshooting
• Downloads — every firmware release, the Windows EDID utility, the Silabs USB drivers for Windows XP to 11, and the HDfury EDID collection
• All 40 EDID banks — the complete list per LED colour, so you can see exactly what each bank advertises
• Six-step quick start
• Glossary — EDID, handshake, HDCP, LLDV, chroma subsampling and the rest, in plain language

The site is available in English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Czech, Slovenian, Romanian, Greek and Arabic.

Works with

Any source up to 18Gbps: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Apple TV 4K, Nvidia Shield, Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray players, satellite and cable boxes, media players, laptops and HTPCs.

And everything after it: TVs, projectors, AV receivers, soundbars, matrix switches, splitters, extenders and video walls — down to old DVI-D monitors.

Technical specifications

In the box

• Dr HDMI 4K processor
• Power supply, your choice of EU, UK, US or AU/NZ plug
• USB to mini USB cable

RS232 is built in. The GoBlue Bluetooth and infrared dongle, required for the Android and iOS apps, is a separate accessory.