Large Room - how to connect - help....

[Skellen]

I need to pick thine brains....

New the part of s towers includes a relatively large kitchen/ living area roughly 10m x 10m. The look is to be minimalist / industrial and as part of that I'm going to be putting a largish (55 inch) TV on one wall. As this is going to be our main living area I want it to have some decent sound and connect up the Sky HD etc.

Here is the issue - we are approaching cable run stage in the build and I need to to work out what to use. The TV will be on the wall with nothing below or to one side. The AV cupboard will be at the other end of the room - so roughly 12m of cable away.

I need to connect Sky, Blu-ray, Ethernet etc. Plus I need to use the audio return a suitable AVreceiver to power the speakers.

I've been looking at Bravia sync as it seems a good solution - just one HDMI run and everything else networks together. Hlowever it seems to be a bit flakey and no one can tell me if I need more than one HDMI run. Other this I need to overcome are:

1. Apparently Sky doesn't like more than 10m HDMI runs?
2. I need to have only 1 remote control - which is preferably the Sky one as Mrs S can work it and she can use the Sky plus.

I've tried doing this all through various amps and the menus are far to complex for "management" to approve of..... What I need is the TV controlling everything, especially as this will be an Internet TV with iPlayer etc.

Thanks for any advice,

[h0b0]

With decent quality HDMI cable there should be no issue with your cable run. The alternative is to use cat5 cables but this sounds like too much hassle in your case.

For your remote control issues I would go with a harmony remote with RF control. This will control everything and is easy to operate. Some say it is complex to set up but I have never had an issue. The benefit to this over the sky remote is that you can easily use your home theater speakers when ever you are watching TV. The alternative is to use the sky remote and run coax from the back of the sky box from the second outlet to the TV. Then plug a magic eye into the coax and sit the eye on top of the TV. You can now control the TV and sky.

[MrP80]

Run one HDMI between your TV, and the AV amp. Power the TV and add Ethernet (for smart TV stuff). Use a decent HDMI for the long run to keep then need for error correction under control.

Then run all sources through the AV amp, and use a Harmony remote as already said to switch it all. Hide all the components out of site, and add an IR repeater to get signals to the devices.

Don't run it all through the TV and back out to the amp, you are likely to be loosing 5.1 by routing Bluray through the TV. Let each item do the job it's meant to.

Once set up you just press a button for TV, Bluray etc and it changes everything you need. Switching through sources on a TV in more complex

[Skellen]

Thanks all.

I had a play with the Hamony remote - my only problem with it was the was it handled the Sky box and recording / anytime stuff. It was a bit of a fiddle.

Actually I've seen that decent long HDMI cables aren't too expensive - I thought they be hundreds.

So I'm going to run 4xhdmi, 4x cat6. 2x rf, 1x multi core (if I ever need ir blaster) and power.

I will let the Tv do the switching and let the CEC / ARC feed sounds signals to the amp.

I can then keep the Sky control as I can set it to run my TV and the sound control, power on etc should all still work.

Thanks again.