Home A/V Question

I am in negotiations for a home to be built. We are planning on having a power outlet and cable outlet on the wall in 2 locations to wall mount flat screen tvs. In thinking about it, and I may be stupid here, but if you wall mount the TV, where does the cable box go? The area we are moving to only offers satellite and the much more affordable cable tv providers.

In my last house, it was in the basement under the master bed room. In this house, they are in the closet behind the family room TV and in the closet behind the Master TV. You will need the cable TV jack near the box, and you will need an HDMI cable from the box to the TV (at least a cable path - maybe they can leave a pull string for you so you can pull cables at a later time) Oh, and power for both the TV and the box.

Some models of TV are ready to accept the cable/satellite tv cards but that whole process is messed up.

I have HDTV via Directv (DVR) with 1080p units running component video over 50 feet in one instance.

Consider where the cable box/DVD player, etc might go and make sure you can route all of the HDMI, component, and/or audio cables.

Also consider telephone (for PPV which they say is required but you can get out of that) and Cat6 cable for a PC or other streaming device.

Oh and go get a qoute from an audio video place for pre-close (if your builder will allow it) and post-close (ie opening up the walls).

Ryan_PA said:

I am in negotiations for a home to be built. We are planning on having a power outlet and cable outlet on the wall in 2 locations to wall mount flat screen tvs. In thinking about it, and I may be stupid here, but if you wall mount the TV, where does the cable box go? The area we are moving to only offers satellite and the much more affordable cable tv providers.

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I had my whole house wired with Cat5e, Dual Video, and digital phone jacks.

What we did in the TV room was have them run Mini Coax and HDMI from the corner to the TV mount then bought a corner TV stand for the box, DVD,VCR , and Home theater. If you are building I highly recommend having them wire the walls for speakers also. I have 3 panels hidden by the corner unit (HDMI/mini coax), Speaker plate, and the input box. You can also have them run a conduit from the roof for the Dish wires so none show outside.

Not sure what cable company you have but I get 250 channels plus 80HD channels for $20 a month less than comcast charges for 120 channels with no HD (gotta pay even more for that)

So instead of a cable outlet in the wall I would need something like this:
http://www.directron.com/1porthdmiwp.html

And the other end near wherever I am putting the cable box.

You have a couple of options. You could put the satellite /cable receiver in the same room, so that your remote will still be able to send commands to it, or you could put the receiver somplace like the basement and run in IR lead from the room that you're gong to have the TV installed in to the location of your receiver.

FWIW, run your own cable if you're capable. I ran all my own phone, coax, cat5 and speaker wire when we built our house. It saved me about $6k when compared to the quotes that I got minus the cost of the cable. All you need are some low voltage electrical boxes, the wire, and a drill with a wood boring bit. My builder had no problem with me coming in and doing it myself.

The most versatile thing to do is run some 2" PVC inside the wall from the bottom (receptacle level), up the wall to where the TV will come out. Just put an empty electrician's box at each end (and nailed to a stud) and drill a hole in the bottom (of the top one) and the top (of the bottom one) for the PVC to terminate into. You can do this after framing and electrical rough-in. Just sneak in on a weekend. (Or try to get the builder to do it and pay out the ass.) Then when the drywallers come through, they won't drywall over it because the boxes will look like receptacle boxes. When the house is going to finish, the boxes can just be covered up with a blank plate. Then you can run whatever you want up that wall.

Also, FYI... when I built my house, I came in after electrical rough-in and wired the whole house for sound and home theater and measured the exact points where I left all the wire terminations. After we moved in, I bought all the parts (speakers, volume controls, sound input/distribution boxes), cut out drywall and installed everything. Now we have speakers in the ceilings and on the walls (home theater), even outside on the screened-in porch, and we love it! Plus I saved thousands by DIY-ing it.

Yea. DIY if you can, but some builders are real pricks about it.

It's somewhat justifiable these days when tweekers come by and steal alll of the copper out of unfinished houses.

IMHO, it's completely counter productive to mount a slim display on the wall and still have a bunch of components exposed on a stand. Do you have any closets or basement space within about 20' of the display? Have you considered front projection instead of LCD?

There really are 2 areas I need to do this for. One is in the family room above the fireplace. There will either be built ins, or free standing book cases on either side of the fireplace, so it would be easy enough to put the box there. It is also directly above the basement, so assuming there is a way to but the box in the basement and still make the remote work, that would be awesome.

The other is in the sitting area of the master BR. There will be a long dresser under the TV and a small desk to the left, so either spot could work.

Over the fireplace...
That was the original install pic but I changed out to a Sanyo Z2000 projector recently for 1080p. It's got a white case and I have it flush against the ceiling now.

Equipment is off to the left size in a nook that bumps out into the garage.

olllllo said:

Yea. DIY if you can, but some builders are real pricks about it.

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That's true and there's usually some wording in the contract to keep buyers out during construction, but it's really for liability reasons more than anything. It helps if it's not a Lot/Home package, in other words, if you already own the lot or purchased it from a third party, there isn't much a builder can do to keep you off your land. It also helps to form a good relationship with the site superintendent/project manager... bring them homebrew!

If you are having a home built I would recommend adding many many more outlets, AV connections, copper ethernet and fiber optic than you think you will need... it is a lot easier to configure your home before the close-in rather than find out you really wish you had run the line. Also consider adding plenty of in-wall speaker wire throughout the house... you won't regret it. Be sure to put them in the bathrooms and the 2nd floor ceilings as well.

We did this and were very happy. I placed the cable box in a closet and ran several cables to our projector. I also had extra ethernet drop put in every room of the house because you can transmit 1080p over ethernet for not that much these days.

Another good idea is to run pvc pipe from the basement/crawlspace to the attic, inside an interior wall. This way you can add just about anything you want later to just about anywhere in the house (except 1st floor ceilings would still be difficult). Remember, vertical penetrations need to be fire-caulked before insulation inspection.

Based on my 30 minutes of investigation and basic application of logic, I think the PVC routing is the way to go. I think I could use something like this: http://www.smarthome.com/83608.html to then control the hidden components.

Ryan_PA said:

Based on my 30 minutes of investigation and basic application of logic, I think the PVC routing is the way to go. I think I could use something like this: http://www.smarthome.com/83608.html to then control the hidden components.

Click to expand...

That would certainly do the trick for you. I love smarthome.com. They have so much cool stuff there.

Run a second insulated conduit with several thick walled 1/4" ID beverage lines. Devote one for glycol and...
Nevermind.