I recently attempted to connect my home computer to my plasma television in order to catch up on some of my favorite shows on Hulu.com. Unfortunately, I discovered that my home computer didn’t have an HDMI connection. After a bit of research I found the Atlone USB 2.0 to HDMI Converter and thought that my problems were over. Unfortunately, they were not.
I purchased the Atlona converter 
from Frys here in Sacramento and took it home. The packaging was clean without a lot of extra material, which I appreciate being in California (less garbage to throw away) and the device was a no-frills, extra switch setup…which theoretically meant a plug-n-play installation. Sadly, my experience wasn’t that simple.
I followed the instructions and installed the software, connecting the device at the appropriate time and yet, when the little green light was supposed to come on…there was nothing. I went through the troubleshooting steps provided in the documentation as well as looked out on the forums. I even included upgrading the firmware for the device. Finally after several hours of exhausting every path I could think of, I decided to take the device back to pick up another one…after all, I’ve dealt with broken parts before.
The Frys return policy was as easy as ever, and soon I was once again home with a new device in hand. Once again I followed the instructions, and once again…no little green light. So, I can see one device being bad, but two?…not likely. So at this point I took the extreme step of completely uninstalling my anti-virus utility (McAfee) from my system. Previously I had simply disabled it while performing the installation. I rebooted and went through 
the installation procedures again and behold…the little green light came on and I was receiving picture on my television.
Unfortunately, the saga didn’t end there. I inadvertently switched the EDID button and the unit started showing resolutions that my television would not support. I tried switching it back, but the resolutions remained. SO…thinking it would reset if I unplugged it…I unplugged it…afterwhich the little green light remained off. No amount of rebooting helped either.
I posted a note on the company’s support forums on April 21st and have yet to recieve a reply.
Here’s a link if you’d like to see the problem as I documented for the company, my system specs and their response, or lack there of: http://forum.atlona.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=309
I have long since returned the device to Frys and don’t recommend the unit to anyone running the Vista operating system. Additionally, their tech support group is non-responsive and in reading other forum responses can come off as condescending and rude, treating their customers badly.
Overall result, I’m not really impressed with Atlona as a company or their products.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I recently bought one of these HDPix units from Atlona as well. Obviously, I didn’t bother to check their track record before buying. There’s no tech support to speak of and documentation and driver versions is a mess. But I have good news. Somehow I have stubbled upon a solution to the problem this post identified. I too could not get the unit to work on my Vista pc either. It would simply not recognize it. I was ready to pack it up and make the trip out to Fry’s to return it, until I thought maybe I’ll try it out on my XP laptop. Not that I would do what I originally intended to do with my Vista pc on my laptop but just wanted to check to see if the unit was a real dud. As it turns out, it was not. Everything worked beautifully as Atlona boasted on their website and documentation and I didn’t even have to restart my computer for the software features to work. It was not until 24hrs later I remembered the firmware update they have available on their website for download and that I should try use it via my XP laptop which has no problems communicating with the unit. Firmware update was successful and then I switched over to try the installation process again on my Vista. There you have it, after restarting Vista, everything worked on my Vista…!!!!