Confused as to setup in new house
Discussion
Morning all
'Rents in law have just moved into a new house near us and it is a bit of a departure from their old house of 35 years I can say! Basically the last owner must have been really into his AV and his networking as there is a cornucopia of wires hidden (well) behind the walls!
My question is what was taken away by him and how we can go about replacing it, if its worth it and how much of a faff it will be.
In a nutshell:
Each bedroom (4) has a point in it that has 2x CAT 5 or 6 points and two coax connectors - the type that a cable box would use - as well as the standard power.
In the bedrooms, lounge and kitchen there are TV wall brackets with two HDMI cables each that disappear into the wall. The kitchen and lounge TV locations have additional coax wires, as above, that again disappear into the wall.
In the lounge there is some heavy duty power cable that disappears into the wall either side of the main TV location, which I can only guess is for some hefty powered speakers? Behind where they will put their sofa there is some high quality speaker cable on either side, can only be for some satellite speakers I'm assuming.
All of the above terminate under the stairs, where the Virgin superhub thing is. Basically huge amounts of CAT 5/6, all the coax wires and loads of HDMI. All cables seem to be excellent quality, heavy, not that flexible and with what look like gold connectors.
In addition running along the lounge ceiling and in the ceiling in the master bedroom are large flush speakers and the house was advertised with the "potential to have piped music".
My questions are:
Can these speakers take their power/signal from HDMI or coax?
What could be the reasoning for two HDMI cables to the kitchen and lounge TV points - how would you control the input as it terminates elsewhere out of remote range?
Network aside, is there some kind of massive HDMI splitter that he would have had and perhaps had the virgin box/DVD/other source under the stairs and somehow control it remotely around the house?
Basically all the rents in law would like would be the piped music - again, some kind of coax amp or HDMI source that can connect to an iPod or some kind of streaming box?
Father in law is keen to just snip all wires and live without it all, but as everything is installed so well Im keen to sell the idea of the fully networked AV as I'm (selfishly) keen to get it working and back to awesome. Not if it is going to be £000s though.
Any thoughts?
'Rents in law have just moved into a new house near us and it is a bit of a departure from their old house of 35 years I can say! Basically the last owner must have been really into his AV and his networking as there is a cornucopia of wires hidden (well) behind the walls!
My question is what was taken away by him and how we can go about replacing it, if its worth it and how much of a faff it will be.
In a nutshell:
Each bedroom (4) has a point in it that has 2x CAT 5 or 6 points and two coax connectors - the type that a cable box would use - as well as the standard power.
In the bedrooms, lounge and kitchen there are TV wall brackets with two HDMI cables each that disappear into the wall. The kitchen and lounge TV locations have additional coax wires, as above, that again disappear into the wall.
In the lounge there is some heavy duty power cable that disappears into the wall either side of the main TV location, which I can only guess is for some hefty powered speakers? Behind where they will put their sofa there is some high quality speaker cable on either side, can only be for some satellite speakers I'm assuming.
All of the above terminate under the stairs, where the Virgin superhub thing is. Basically huge amounts of CAT 5/6, all the coax wires and loads of HDMI. All cables seem to be excellent quality, heavy, not that flexible and with what look like gold connectors.
In addition running along the lounge ceiling and in the ceiling in the master bedroom are large flush speakers and the house was advertised with the "potential to have piped music".
My questions are:
Can these speakers take their power/signal from HDMI or coax?
What could be the reasoning for two HDMI cables to the kitchen and lounge TV points - how would you control the input as it terminates elsewhere out of remote range?
Network aside, is there some kind of massive HDMI splitter that he would have had and perhaps had the virgin box/DVD/other source under the stairs and somehow control it remotely around the house?
Basically all the rents in law would like would be the piped music - again, some kind of coax amp or HDMI source that can connect to an iPod or some kind of streaming box?
Father in law is keen to just snip all wires and live without it all, but as everything is installed so well Im keen to sell the idea of the fully networked AV as I'm (selfishly) keen to get it working and back to awesome. Not if it is going to be £000s though.
Any thoughts?
I think you've got 3 options here:
1) have an 'installer' around to assess what they can see
2) just plug stuff in and see what happens
3) contact the previous owner and ask him to summarise
Option 2 is tricky, but you could certainy see where the HDMI cables go to/from by plugging a source in.
It is quite likely he had a HDMI matrix or splitter which is distributing stuff like Sky or Virgin throughout the house, either via HDMI or CAT5 or possibly both, or may have been using the coax - difficult to say!
I'm sure an installer could help, and could then 'sell' you the missing bits (e.g. modulators, HDMI matrix etc)
The best bet, though, would be the previous owner. I'd be happy to field questions on stuff like that if it was my old house - he's likely to have had a fair hand in either installing it or designing it so hopefully could braindump 90% of it quite easily in an email or even a text message...
1) have an 'installer' around to assess what they can see
2) just plug stuff in and see what happens
3) contact the previous owner and ask him to summarise
Option 2 is tricky, but you could certainy see where the HDMI cables go to/from by plugging a source in.
It is quite likely he had a HDMI matrix or splitter which is distributing stuff like Sky or Virgin throughout the house, either via HDMI or CAT5 or possibly both, or may have been using the coax - difficult to say!
I'm sure an installer could help, and could then 'sell' you the missing bits (e.g. modulators, HDMI matrix etc)
The best bet, though, would be the previous owner. I'd be happy to field questions on stuff like that if it was my old house - he's likely to have had a fair hand in either installing it or designing it so hopefully could braindump 90% of it quite easily in an email or even a text message...
timetex said:
The best bet, though, would be the previous owner. I'd be happy to field questions on stuff like that if it was my old house - he's likely to have had a fair hand in either installing it or designing it so hopefully could braindump 90% of it quite easily in an email or even a text message...
I'd be doing this - he's probably quite proud of his installation and would probably want people to be getting some use out of his "investment".
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