OT What cables for TV

brianw wrote on 12/28/2009, 3:34 AM
I am advising my daughter and husband on cabling for their new house. When completed there will be no access to the main TV point (he's the architect, not me. grin). So all possible cables have to be installed now.
My suggestion is, TV antenna, Satellite feed, Telephone, Cat 6 network, audio as required for surround sound.
Any other suggestions? Should I consider HDMI at least to an access point elsewhere in the house?
This is the Australian countryside so no cable service and internet will be via ADSL telephone for a long while yet. Our crazy non-tech politicians have "promised" us 100meg fiber to the whole land but with Aus the size of the US and only 22 million people no one is holding their breath.
TIA, Brian

Comments

Sidecar wrote on 12/28/2009, 5:02 AM
You should consult a qualified home theater installer for the latest.

This sounds crazy, but you might want to run two or even three colors of CAT-6 to each location. The wire and terminals are relatively inexpensive and many signals are being converted to CAT-5/6 then back for longer runs.

HDMI technically can only run about 15 feet (I believe) without line amps, the wire is unwieldy and the connectors are dreadful. Not to mention it seems to change standards by the month depending on what functions it's asked to do.

HDMI is what you get when a video path is designed by computer engineers instead of video engineers and the movie people get their say about copy protection too.

Video engineers know they need to run high frequency signals cleanly for long runs. Computer people say, "Oh, the monitor will never be more than about five or ten feet away from the CPU, so who cares?" Video engineers came up with SDI (Serial Digital Interface) on a simple, bulletproof coax. Or fiber optic runs. The computer guys came up with the dreadful, stiff, oversized, non-locking HDMI connector that falls out of the receptacle.

Anyway, many solutions for signal distribution out there rely on conversion to CAT-5 or CAT-6. These aren't computer signals, but video and audio running on CAT-6 twisted pairs. There are HDMI-to-CAT6 converters that let you send the HDMI over CAT6. Not cheap, but it's a solution.

Personally, I like to maintain a UHF roof antenna in addition to whatever cabling is supplying cable TV. Don't know if you get digital HD broadcast, but here it's a terrific signal...the best live TV you can get. So getting both signals means two well-marked coaxes.

My Verizon FiOS fiber optic service provides TV, internet and phone all out of one, multi-function wall terminal. It converts the laser pulse coming down the fiber into a digital coax video signal that feeds the decoder boxes (which then output HDMI to the TVs); a CAT-5 signal that feeds the computer internet wireless router; and standard dial-tone phone plugs with provision for several discrete phone lines. A twist is thrown in because the TV DVR decoder box has a coax that runs back to the computer router so the TV part of the system can access the internet for TV schedules and other internet-based features.

Bottom line: predicting the future of the electronic signal distribution side of house wiring is a black art. I've seen houses under construction with media centers that fed one or two TVs in each of the 15 rooms in the house. The sheer number of wires run from the hub to each room was amazing.

JJKizak wrote on 12/28/2009, 5:40 AM
The amount of wiring in a new house is staggering with the new electrical control systems alone not including electronic wiring. The house next door (2 million) had about 6 huge control and distribution panels for electrical, electronics, and H&V geothermal control.
TV antenna cable is usually RG-6 or RG-6 quad shield and the use of cat5 or 6 is of the norme. If your antenna cable run is over 100 feet then you can jump to 1/2" styroflex ( no loss at 1000 mghz) if you have money to burn. You might have to have a lot of dummy wall spaces to accommodate all of those wires.
JJK
Jacobk wrote on 12/28/2009, 5:46 AM
I won't recommend ditching away the cables permanently like that, you should at least be able to move stuff around later, anything else would just be bad design.

There should be ways to access the cables, and install additional cables easily, should it be needed later. In most houses, this is not something the architect has thought much about, but it is actually very important, depending on your demands.

I live in a home where all the cables and wires are attached to the side of the walls, or stuffed behind furniture, this get quite ugly to look at. Though guests likely don't notice, I'm getting quite annoyed by it myself. I would love to have these cables and wires hidden in the walls, behind some easy-to-detach-attach panels, in case i need to change something.

You will likely get different responses though, depending on who you ask. I'm pretty used to work with computers, so i get annoyed easily by having cables lying around, or falling over the wire to my headphones (sigh). But i also get annoyed by not being able to access the cables/wires, if i move stuff around, get a new hard drive, or whatever. So basically i would design my home, so cables wouldn't easily get in my way, but still so that i could access them easily and directly without much effort, in case i need to add or change the wiring inside house.

You should look at it this way, just as an example. What if we don't use TV Antenna in a few years? That is very likely to happen if you ask me, somewhere down the road at least. The old TV Signal, both digital and analog, are already obsolete in my world.
Coursedesign wrote on 12/28/2009, 6:16 AM
Lots of good suggestions here.

But "The old TV Signal, both digital and analog, are already obsolete in my world."

???

What's wrong with 50-60 channels of digital (many of them in HD) with a picture quality that exceeds either cable or satellite, all with a monthly bill of $0?

Obviously the number of channels will depend on where you live, and the choice may depend on your tastes.

BTW, for those who don't have the Playboy Channel (does it still exist?), there is always "Lingerie Football" available OTA. To my great surprise, this seems to be taken seriously. Are they kidding or have I gotten old-fashioned already?
bsuratt wrote on 12/28/2009, 1:38 PM
Multiple Cat 6 cables a must.

Also consider a 3 or 4 in PVC Pipe conduit with preinstalled pull strings between the TV location and an access point where cables come into the house. That way you can always pull thru what you need in the future.
lynn1102 wrote on 12/28/2009, 1:53 PM
On Direct TV, Playboy does still exist, and some even better. I don't subscribe so I don't get to see it.
During the season, I can drive 5 miles and see Lingerie Football live. It started last year and surprisingly didn't have a big audience. For next year they have joined with some other team or league and hope to do better.
Here in southeast PA. my over the air digital reception is down to about 6 or sometimes 8 channels If it gets foggy, I'm down to 2. During the analog days, I could count up 30 good channels.
Where are you located that you get so many channels?
Lynn

ChristoC wrote on 12/28/2009, 8:33 PM
"Also consider a 3 or 4 in PVC Pipe conduit with preinstalled pull strings..." is the best suggestion, albeit a bit large (I would go for approx 1inch dia), but don't use string! - vermin, moths etc will eat it, or it'll just rot - use wire - then you will be futureproof.