Television, Audio, Telephone, Data, CAT 5 and Baluns!

[Quigs]

I am in process of building my extension and am now applying thought to the wiring of the extension. I am of course going to do a structured wiring setup for my data network, but I was just attempting to think what other uses I could use it for.

Theoretically if I run a standard STAR network back to some central point, I can associate certain wires to data, but wondered what the groups thoughts were on running telephone and television across the same wires.

It would appear from a little bit of googling that you can run television across CAT 5 using a device called a balun - has anyone got any experience with these - do they do a reasonable job, and if so where is a good source in the UK. Or is it just a better (and cheaper!) idea to run coax?

Same question for audio distribution as well.......

I was planning to distribute phones around the house in the same manner, and just using RJ45 to RJ11 convertors - again is this a sensible idea or should I just run telephone wires?

Thoughts appreciated!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Gary Quigley See my build at

[Ian Stirling]

The better way is almost always to put in as big a conduit/... as you can. Ideally you should be able to walk down it to route cable, but that may be seen by some as overkill.

Seriously. Coax is cheap. Telephone is reasonable to run over CAT5, video isn't really, coax is better. What if you want to (in the future) run a satellite dish to a box in the extension, ...

I am in the process of wishing there was some nice and easy way to go to 50mm from 38mm conduit, without digging up the route.

[chris French]

In message , Quigs writes

You can just wire the Cat5 cable straight into a phone socket module in the same faceplate as the ethernet socket

[Dave Stanton]

O

Balun stands for Balance to unbalanced transformer, does what it says on the tin, converts a balanced feed to unbalance feed and vice versa.

Dave

[vivienne wykes]

Hi There,

As far as the audio for your extension is concerned there are many solutions depending on what functionality you want to have. You could have one audio system and connect the output of amplifier to an impedance matching speaker selection switch which could do say 4 rooms (QED I Think make one).Then run speaker cables to each room. This would be multiroom single source. ie the same audio heard in each room.

Or you could have a local amp in each audio area and run cat5 from main system to loop through each local amps tape input & output.

This means you could have the option of the main system in every room or in some rooms only with others listening to a local source.

ie Main system in living room being listened to in the bathroom and hall and a Radio local source in the kitchen.

Mail back if this is unclear or you have any questions.

Regards

[Andy Hall]

You're welcome.

Obviously you don't need to do all these things, but I thought that some of the concepts like organising consolidation points and runs of cable might be useful. It has the advantage that you can put the first pieces in, even if you haven't fully figured out what you will do in the new pieces of the house or don't want to disrupt the old too much.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[Rob Whitton]

I've done this and installed a pair of CAT5e (I might do CAT6 if I was doing it again now - still more expensive but you don't want to do it again and the cost of the cable etc is low compared to the cost of your time) and a pair of COAX (CT100) to each room with the central termination point under the stairs. I have used the CAT5e cabling for networking, telephone, baseband video and digital audio. To do the video and audio you do need to use a balun (I ran digital audio over about 10m without a balun for a while but it was susceptible to interference). Baluns are quite expensive (I had to source them from overseas the UK cost was so ridiculous - contrary to another poster I have found passive baluns for S-Video to give excellent results) so you might want to check this out. Apparently if the runs aren't too long and you have the right balun then you can pass UHF or even satellite signals over CAT5e. I've not tried this and the better cable you use the better results you are likely to get (CAT6 is likely to be better). In the UK you can get the parts from

- they do baseband and RF baluns which they state are capable of handling satellite signals. I found the cheapest source of baseband baluns was in Australia although I actually sourced mine in the USA for other reasons. I forget the name of the Australian company but I'm sure you can google for it.

I definitely wouldn't install separate phone wiring. CAT5e is better than phone cable. Each "standard" CAT5e cable has 4 pairs. This is enough for a phone connection (or a pair of phones if ring isn't connected to one pair) and a 100Mbit ethernet over a single cable (you need to use a network doubler to break out the cable into two sockets). If your running gigabit ethernet then this will use all 4 pairs so if you plan to do this in the future then you might want to use a pair of cables as you will then have spare pairs for the phone connections.

You can readily get rj11 to rj45 converters however be warned that I've found that different products sometimes use different pairs so you might want to stick with one make. The alternative is to open them up and then resolder the connections to "your standard". Not rocket science but rather tedious.

I hope this helps.

Cheers

Rob

"Quigs" wrote in message news: [e-mail]...

[The Natural Philosopher]

You obviously have never had to route cables in Telehouse.

The void under the corridoors is FULL of cable. Very little of it LSOH as well, tho its all suposed to be.

waht teh man sez.

[Dave Liquorice]

Baluns work pretty well but coax is *much* cheaper.

aren't the cheapest but you need two at =A336 each...

Not so hard but you'll have to go balanced rather than the normal domestic unbalanced system.

Phones will work fine over the Cat5. If you go for faceplates with modules you could just terminate the cable to the appropiate module and not need (expensive) adapters.

I'd go for flood of Cat5 (generic term, put in the best cable you can afford, Cat6?), working on the principle if you think you want 1 socket somewhere put in two cables. Add to that quality coax (CT100 or better) to selected locations.

Ducting/conduit has already been mentioned but be aware that pulling a new cable into duct that is much over 50% full can be "fun" doubly so if you are trying to pull round a bend (ie arrange things so you have access at all corners).

With flood coverage you are going to have a lot of cables at the center point label 'em as you lay them. Saves having to trace them out later. You don't have to terminate them all but it probably makes sense to do so as the 30s job of providing a network feed via a patch panel suddenly grows to an hour as you dig out the cable, terminate it etc.

[Will Cooke]

Further to other posts...

Video over CAT5 is indeed possible, and with some very good results, depending on how deep your pockets are.

A google on "Home Automation" will turn up so many projects you won't know where to start, if you're anything like me.

A good starting point is:

a look at Keith's KAT5 modules. They come in at about 35quid an end, and can be made to your specs. (e.g. 15pin-D monitor, RGB, SCART ends)

A word of warning: Once you start playing with CAT5 at home it's only a matter of time until you have to try and convince the wife that being able to open the curtains from the TV really is necessary.

-Will