My HDMI does not work with the Arris cable box

A couple of weeks ago I had Spectrum come to replace my Cisco cable box. In its place that gave me Arris. Never heard of them. Anyway after the repair man left, I went ahead to connect via a hdmi 2 x 1 splitter that worked perfectly with the Cisco box, but not with this one. I went to the store and tried to exchange for Cisco, but the attendant said they only have Arris, no more Cisco. So i returned home with the Arris. Experimenting with the hdmi splitter I finally got to view the cable channel on my Kitchen tv...BUT, it only works if i do not have the hdmi second output connected to my main TV. So as far as I know, I would have to do daily changing cables just to view in Kitchen. I'm talking about local channels that one usually gets with an OTA, but i get very bad or not even some channels with my indoor antenna. I have tried numerous antennas and still cannot get some local channels in my area which is NY and that is saying something. I see that they are selling Cisco box's on Ebay very cheap, but no remotes. So what good are those box's without a remote? Why would anyone buy them for the lack of a remote?