Fitting house with ideal cables before plastering etc
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New member Username: JezzaPost Number: 1 Registered: Oct-04 | Hi all! Im after your advice on the best cables to fit the house up with. Basically its in the process of being built and the walls have not yet been done, so this is the perfect time to get the cables I want fitted around the house. I wanted to have a good home theater setup with a DVD player, Hi-Fi, Sky TV, computer server etc in a room upstairs and have lots of the other rooms having sockets in the walls that will connect to these devices so that you can listen to music, watch TV etc anywhere in the house. The computer side is easy for dealing with MP3s and webtv etc, but for Hi-Fi and DVD I don't know what cable to use. The trouble is Im going to need a lot of it, and I imagine this will lessen the quality quite a bit. I was imagining composite video, and left audio, right audio sockets for each room, but it doesn't look like thats going to be a good idea for stretching around the house. (I will be using a switch of sorts in the "server room" by the way, thats not the issue). I guess speaker cable would solve the audio issue, but I really wanted to be able to get video around the house as well, and not all rooms are going to have speakers in, some rooms would have to have the audio going in to the TV, so speaker cable wouldn't be good enough for that. Could I get away with the composite video/stereo sockets that I suggested? What is recommended for cable lengths for these? Any advice would be very much appreciated, because I need to get this stuff by the end of the week or else it will be too late. |
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Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 1618 Registered: Dec-03 | That's a pretty tall order for various video outputs from only 1 source? Am I getting this right? With only one video source you will have a lot of video signal degradation specially on longer cable runs. you might want to consider a video repeater or booster. For audio purposes, again a lot of signal loss and a lot of interference. You may want to consult a local audio/video installer. If they are any good, they will give you suggestions on what you need for a small or even no fee at all. |
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New member Username: JezzaPost Number: 2 Registered: Oct-04 | Yeah I was worried you'd say that. I was thinking that by using a switch that it wouldn't matter how many rooms the video/audio will be sent to though, because the circuit to the other rooms could be cut by the switch? Am I right in that? Im gonna try asking advice from somewhere anyway, but I wanted to get as many opinions as possible and you guys sound like you know your stuff  Someone at work suggested using XLR cable for the audio, then I can get away with a hell of a lot of length. From some checks on the Internet though, it looks like its intended for use with microphones rather than what I actually intended. Would that actually work? Its amazingly difficult to find anywhere on the Internet detailing how to do this kind of setup. Perhaps because its not a good thing to do then maybe :D The idea is that this house will be pretty hi-tech and support all kinds of solutions later on, so I don't wanna install things that are gonna make for really poor quality. I know speaker cables would be ok, and I hear that XLR cable might work even better, but unfortunately neither solutions help with connecting up a TV  I guess the conventional co-ax cable will provide ok video, but its not rly "ok" that I was after |
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New member Username: JezzaPost Number: 3 Registered: Oct-04 | Attached is a VERY crude diagram I just did to help try to illustrate what I had in mind... As you can see from there, the remotely activate switch (maybe something like http://www.audiooutfitter.com/store/AV-100.html) could be used with a remote control in the room to specify the source of the sound/video that you wanted to use at the time.  |
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