Building a house- what technology should I build in?

[busta]

I'm in the process of gutting and rebuilding an old house. My TV will be wall mounted and I want to avoid having cables visible as much as possible. The rest of the AV equipment will be in a cabinet away from the TV.

I already have power and an aerial running to the TV, but what other cables should I put in before it's all plastered?

HDMI is the obvious one. Is 1 HDMI cable enough or do I need several?

Is it even worth bothering? Won't everything be wireless before long?

I don't want to miss this opportunity to get a neat install so any advice is much appreciated.

[Rowan138]

include 3 HDMI cables, and ethernet to every room in the house, because even the bathroom cabinet will be internet connected before long!

[davepoth]

I'd skip the HDMI and run more Ethernet instead. HDMI extenders that use Cat6 are available, and will make the house a lot more future-proof. My guess is that delivering content to a screen by Ethernet is going to be more common than HDMI before long.

[busta]

It looks like ethernet and HDMI are both wise ideas. I've decided to put in some conduit behind the plaster so that I can run whatever cables are necessary and remove/change them if they become obsolete.

[MissChief]

If you plan to have a sky dish at all it may be worth running double cable into a few of the rooms as well?

[FlossyThePig]

I don't know how soon you want to install your cables but Intel should have their optical Thunderbolt cables out before Christmas.

Intel on Thunderbolt said:

• 10Gbps bi-directional, dual channel data transfer
• Data & Video on single cable
• Daisy chain up to six devices
• Compatible with existing DisplayPort devices

[Frances The Mute]

Ethernet and HDMI would certainly be the standard choices.

However, it would pay you to have channels in the wall/wherever capable of fishing through any cables in the future; thus ensuring ultimate flexibility.

[JimbobVFR]

busta said:

It looks like ethernet and HDMI are both wise ideas. I've decided to put in some conduit behind the plaster so that I can run whatever cables are necessary and remove/change them if they become obsolete.

That was going to be my suggestion (as well as a couple of HDMI at least as well)

What I did was leave some runs of unterminated Ethernet in place. These can either be terminated if you want Ethernet or used to pull through whatever cable you want, along with a replacement length of ethernet that can then be used later if you want.

The extenders mentioned above can be handy for long runs of HDMI but they are considerably more expensive than cables for up to 10m. so cables still haqve their place IMO.

[busta]

38x16mm trunking now installed so I can put in whatever cables I need when I know what TV and other kit I'm getting. Thanks for the replies, I'm quite out of sync with current AV tech so will probably have lots more questions soon!

[megaphone]

16mm deep? That will make fishing an HDMI lead very difficult, I would go at least 25mm deep.

[MissChief]

Run some string through and put a slip knot on each end so you can feed something through in future?

[busta]

megaphone said:

16mm deep? That will make fishing an HDMI lead very difficult, I would go at least 25mm deep.

It will be set flush with the finished plaster and painted over. the front of the trunking will still be removable so putting cables in will be easy inspite of the shallow depth. Hopefully it will be discreet enough without the hassle of having to fish for cables.

Edited by busta on Thursday 18th October 18:54

[busta]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

As yet I'm not entirely sure. It's a single bedroom dwelling (an annex on a much larger house) so it will never be too complex- no sky tv, maybe a games console, MacMini as a media centre and 5.1 surround. I'll be having a SmartTV of some variety.
I've put speaker wire in the bedroom for a decent hifi but don't intent to have a TV upstairs.

[NorthDave]

The one thing I would look at in a project like this is lighting control - at least in key areas. Check out something like a Lutron Grafik Eye and maybe consider it for key rooms?

[busta]

I'm having remote control lighting for the living area. That bit is easy.

Toxicnerve- no it will never be integrated into the rest of the house.
I'm not even too worried about integrating the bathroom. It's a bachelor pad so I can just leave the door open and turn up the bedroom hifi! So yes, a simple system. Just making sure I don't find myself chipping into the plaster in a couple of years time but I'm fairly confident the simple trunking solution has solved that!

[gtidriver]

Im renovating my house, its just ten years old so only came with aerial cables to a few rooms. Thats now all gone. Now I've installed sky plus, plus aerial to every room plus bt line and two runs of cat 5e. it all runs back to under the stairs cupboard, over 1km of cable is now hidden in walls/floors. My floors look like a patch work quilt in places, worth it though. Any one know the best/cheapest place to buy chrome modular sockets plus the moduals.

[Irrotational]

This thread has a pretty good description of what to do - I am not the original poster...

http://www.blatchat.com/t.asp?id=219864

An important step seems to be getting certain types of cable to only cross each other at right angles - but i can't remember which ones or why!!