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Custom in wall wiring?

Old 01-09-06, 10:32 AM
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Custom in wall wiring?

So my parents are in the process of rebuilding their family room. They have decided to put in a new HT at the same time and bought a Dell 50" plasma to start. Now, they want all the wiring to be done within the walls, but I'm having a tough time figuring out how this is done. I understand speaker wiring, since that's fairly straightforward, but the components have me stumped.

The components will be sitting in the corner of the room, while the tv itself will be above the fireplace mounted on the wall. Now we plan on having 2 connections going to the tv initially: Component for the DVD player and composite for the Cable box. (We plan on upgrading the DVD to HDMI soon and then the cable box to HD as well).

So how exactly do I connect the components to the tv. I know I can just run some long cables to connect them through the wall, but what happens if I want to change the connection type or add a new connection. Is there some type of wall panel that is built that contains all the possible connection choices? Or is it just a hole in the wall behind the tv? Thanks for your help on this cause I have no idea what the solution is.
Old 01-09-06, 01:30 PM
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Run an HDMI cable now. It doesn't have to be attached to anything, it can just hang out inside the wall or connection box somehow. Just make it accessible for the future.

Same goes for any others. Composite, Svideo, component video. If you think you will need them ever, run them in the wall. The extra couple bucks are well worth the peace of mind vs tearing up your wall 2 years from now. You may want to run a CAT5/6 line or two just in case.

You can either leave a hole or use a connection plate, depending on aesthetics and placement. The RCA connections are certainly available. There are modular plates available where you can add only those connections you need if you can't find premade stuff that matches your needs. Not sure offhand if HDMI is available for these yet, but you can search at places like Home Depot or Black Box. If not, you can simply run the cable out of a hole in the plate with a gromit to hold it in place.

Actually, Monoprice already has some wall plates for this.
Old 01-09-06, 01:37 PM
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Since this is a plasma up on a wall, it may be easiest to forego the wall plate on that end. Just leave it as a hole behind the plasma for easier use. You may still want the plate in the equipment rack corner.

And plug any cables you run into the plasma, even if they don't get plugged into anything on the other side.

Last edited by Spiky; 01-09-06 at 01:40 PM.
Old 01-09-06, 02:48 PM
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You would either need to run all the cable you need now or plan for the future by having a conduit in place that a new cable could be pulled through sometime in the future.

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