home entertainment

[elevatordoctor]

I'm redoing my living room..Any websites on how the home theater works,parts involved or how to wire....Any help is appreciated!!!! :?:

[giddonah]

There are two parts to the home theatre, the video signal and the audio signal. Wiring the video signal to a room can be seen here (http://swhowto.com/) (he explains not only video signal wiring, but ethernet wiring too)

The audio signal is pretty simple, you just need to route the speaker wires through the walls and terminate them at wall plates. Check leviton, they make nice wall plates. Google "structured wiring", you'll find tons to read.

[elevatordoctor]

Thanks for the info....Looks like I have alittle reading to do! :shock:

[giddonah]

either that or hire someone to do it for you... :lol:

It's really not that technically difficult, the hard part is running the wires through walls.

[HDNord]

Try: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htforum/index.php

[rgramjet]

Forget the wall plate terminals. Just pull enough wire to get to your speaker and equipment locations for a nice uninterrupted feed. Use a low voltage ring and a single outlet cover plate for multiple wires to run through (at the receiver location). A coax plate (with a smaller hole) for single wire to speaker applications.

Every break you make in the conduit will only degrade the signal.

Good Luck!

[giddonah]

you must have some awesome set of ears to detect that stuff :lol:

[rgramjet]

LOL I love it when my clients want me to install the "gole plated" terminal blocks on the wall then they hook up the $1,000 set of 8' Kimber cables to them. Meanwhile they have 14 or even 16 guage cable running through the walls.

I cant hear difference one between terminal blocks and a true home run....the only difference I feel is in my wallet and cred with the client when I save them a bunch of money.

[giddonah]

Well, I'll have to keep this in mind when dealing with people with more perceptive ears than mine. I don't think I can't hear it, I think I just don't care that much about it :wink:

[rgramjet]

Id be willing to bet that a person with "perceptive ears" cant tell the difference between $1 per foot cable and $500 per foot cables. Gotta love marketing! A graph and the cool cases the cables come in are sometimes all it takes! lol

[98softail]

Maybe some of you can help me...

First, house under construction ready for drywall, I am running wires for telephone, Network and video.

When I say video, I will probably have DirectTV. I do want to be able to have the signal sent to about 8 or 9 tv's. I have read that I should have 2 RG6 wires to each TV. I do not mind the cost of the wiring, but I want to be sure it will work.

Besides the swhowto.com site already listed, does anyone know of other sites which detail video distribution systems?

I want to do this only once, and not have to pull more wire after drywall.

[HDNord]

98softail try these:

http://www.wildtracks.cihost.com/homewire/

http://www.swhowto.com/

Just did mine, ran over 7000 feet of wire including pre-wire for video, sound, phone, networking, alarm, and a CCTV observation camera system.

[midnightscape]

Also check out this site:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=5&f=19

they helped me with my home theater wiring.

[Mike44]

Id be willing to bet that a person with "perceptive ears" cant tell the difference between $1 per foot cable and $500 per foot cables. Gotta love marketing! A graph and the cool cases the cables come in are sometimes all it takes! lol

Sort of reviving an old thread here, but just in case someone wanted to know...

You're right rgramjet. Often, it's not the cable that will reduce the hum and buzz, but rather where you route that cable. The way that most of the hum even gets into the speaker in the first place is from running the speaker wire beside (parallel to) a power cable. The speaker wire is subjected to the electromagnetic waves from the 120V cable and these waves get carried into along the speaker wire right into the speaker. That's the hum or buzz that you can hear. On another note, line voltage EM acting on cat5 in computer networks causes interference and slower network speeds, which is why they have to run all the cat5 by themselves too, just like how all low voltage stuff should be run!

Back to the topic, essentially, you really don't need the Monster Cable stuff if you plan your wire routes carefully. The cheap (well good quality stuff at moderate cost ;)) will work just as well as the expensive monster cable when routed away from parallel runs with power cables. When you have your speaker wire hooked up to all your equipment, just make sure that it is as far away as possible from any of the power cords for those units as well. And once in the wall, don't run it in the same holes as the 120V lines either! I suppose that the moster cable has some kind of metal sheathing around it that helps to prevent EM interference, but still, you can save your wallet by a little planning first! You can, however, cross them only at 90 degrees to each other.

When I set my computer up a while ago, I bundled all the wires together making it all neat and tidy! But there was always an audible hum (trust me it was loud), even when the volume was minimum. After re-routing my speaker wires a few days ago in a different wire tray even just a few inches away, the hum is literally gone! The volume needs to be full before you hear a hiss (but then that could just be my sound card transmitting some hiss too!). So there ya go! Keep your low and line voltage cables separate!

Okay, rant over. Lol.

Mike