Cabling at TV point...

Apr 26, 2011 17 Replies

Hello panel,



I am at the point of 1st fix in a house renovation.



In the living room a LCD telly will be wall mounted roughly at breast height in a certain position on a solid stone wall, which will be rendered and then plastered. Below which will be the 'media table' housing DVD player and Sky box.



In a nearby cupbaord will live a media pc and Sat/RFdistrubution gear. Dish and aerial co-ax feeds will arrive here also



What cabling would the panel suggest be laid in betwixt the aforementioned locations, and how best to trunk it in the wall hopefully allowing some future proofing to occur? Perhaps some form of wide but flat conduit?



So far, a quick brain storm suggests:


4 CT100.
2 ethernet.
3 hdmi (1 long one from cupboard, 2 short ones to telly) Mains, obviously.


Gracious thanks, Tim!



In message , Tim.. wrote

Optical (for audio into an AV amp for surround sound)

Oh, how very last-decade. OK up to DD / DTS 5.1

Doesn't have the bandwidth for modern HD audio. That's all carried over HDMI these days...

Could be wrong but the OP has Sky and I don't think the audio from that goes through HDMI. It has to be via the optical!

In article , Tim.. scribeth thus

Sure about that? I've been in some houses where they've done just that and it lead's to a bit of a neck "crick" after somewhile viewing;!..

I remember some research years ago, might even have been dun by the BBC, where they did this sort of thing and found the least fatiguing was the centre of the screen just a few degrees below the viewers eyeline when seated normally...

breast

Maybe his wife is a dwarf? B-)

Agreed, when sat comfortably you don't want to have to hold your head even a little bit upwards otherwise the neck muscles will complian.

If anyone uses multifocals to view TV don't put it too low or they will have to tilt their head forward all the time.

I sometimes use multifocals and sometimes contact lenses set for distance vision. With HD we sit reasonably close to our 52 inch TV and it is far easier to see the whole screen clearly with contacts.

might be useful:

formatting link
'd add baseband audio feeds too, and put it all outside the conduit so that even more cables can be packed in later.

NT

If the dish and co-ax feeds arrive in the cupboard, and there is a media pc in there too, why have a separate DVD and Sky box?

i.e. you could put them all into the media pc.

Then all you'd need is an HDMI cable.

That would be correct, however it is a rental property, and some tenants are not nearly as technically savvy as others.

Tim.

Does on mine. ( sky HD box -> HDMI -> Panasonic TV ).

I don't think sky output anything other than stereo sound over hdmi. You get dd over the digital audio.

It would have to be very low, like on the floor low for that to be a problem. At least with the varifocals I wear. And tilting ones head down is less strain on the muscles than lifting it up.

OK, that may be poss, since the room with the sky-box is hdmi direct to a 2-ch TV only, no multi-ch decoder.

The multi-ch setup is in another room.

Why would they do that? ( Output output multi-ch on ye olde sp-dif but not HDMI ? )

In article , Graham. scribeth thus

When yer siting down .. how yer gonads do that then;?..

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember tony sayer saying something like:

Yep, it's a pretty dumb place to put it.

For TV viewing, yes. Home cinema is different due to the size of the screen, but I prefer it almost starting from floor level. Unfortunately, walls often don't lend themselves to that, with floor clutter.

In article , Tim.. writes

In that case make the stuff up to the telly point 2x50mm sq ducts[1] side by side to permit passing of all sorts of junk with connectors still fitted.

[1] Chasing a channel in the stonework as reqd and patching with expanded metal lath before replastering to avoid cracks later. Make sure it's well (deeply) covered.

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