I am planning to put all my components in my server room away from the living room where the TV will be. The distance between the TV and the server room will be approximately 20-30 ft.
I am looking for ideas/advice on what I need prepare for while the walls are opened up, and I have the ability to run cables easily.
From server room, I will have the following components 1. DVD player 2. Amplifier receiver 3. VCR 4. Window Media server
My first thoughts were to run HDMI cable and use a DVI/HDMI adapter so that I can display my Media center server onto the 50" LCD display. This cable will be probably 30ft long. Would I worry about noise, degradation , or other factors?
The cables will have to go through the "Attic". I don't actually have an attic because of the way these Eichler houses are built, but currently I have an open roof, which I was thinking of running all the cables through a PVC conduit before it get s buried by foam boards and tar and gravel roof.
I think I will also need to run speaker cables from the server room (next to the AMP) to the locations in the living room where the 7.1 sound system will reside. I was thinking of using 12 gauge speaker wires that I bought from Home Depot/Lowes. Are these thick enough?
For my VCR and DVD player, I was planning to run them to the amplifier , but I am not sure if there is a way to up convert them through the AMP. I haven't actually picked out the AMP yet, so any advice on this would be great.
The PVC pipe is a good idea, make sure it's at least 2 inch pipe. You may want to put a strong string in the pipe to pull your 30 foot HDMI wire through. Not only do you need to run speaker wire to the room but also to the speaker locations. 12 gauge is plenty thick for speaker wires. You will need to get a receiver that will convert all incoming signals to HDMI (Denon avr 3808).