Home theatre install cables

You can also use any customized faceplates or Wall Cable Management Kit and plug your cables into it. Finally, tighten the screws of the wall plates to fix them to the gang boxes. The easiest way to fish an HDMI cable is to unhook one of your cables in the wall and tape a string to its end. Pulling it out, you will pull the string in. You can tape the HDMI wire and the existing one to the string and pull them both back in through the two horizontal studs.

Then you adjust them to your main cable pack. When you buy an HDMI cable, look for codes that verify their standard. By law, all rated lines have alphanumeric codes stamped on their outer insolation. The rate code for in-wall video and data cabling is CL2 or CL3. Different rate codes indicate the other specifications of the cabling.

You need to remove and replace one brick to put the cabling behind it. Next is to remove enough mortar to be able to adjust your HDMI cables. Then you will need to conceal the wires with a facing of mortar, for example. There are some limitations and special circumstances, however; for more detail, see our article on NEC ratings. Another question to be considered is how cable will come out of a wall. There are basically two choices: one can run cables out of an open hole in a wall, straight to the device being connected, or one can use a pass-through wallplate jack, and connect the device to the jack with a cable.

The latter, of course, is a familiar solution -- most cable tv installations are handled in just that way. There are advantages to the passthrough wallplate jack that are often overlooked, and so we'll touch on some of those here. First, since many different applications can use the same cables, it's possible to have an extremely versatile installation by using passthrough jacks. For example, one Belden A cable can accommodate digital audio, composite video, a CATV input, or a satellite antenna line; two can take stereo audio or s-video in "breakout" form; three can take component video; and so on.

In our own theater room at home, we have ten A cables running about fifteen feet from a couple of wallplates down to a sort of "patch panel" setup in the basement, so that any of the ten BNC jacks can be assigned any function just by plugging in the appropriate cables and devices.

All ten were measured to the same length prior to installation, so that there can be no issue of mis-timing. We use some to bring in satellite signal, one to bring in cable TV signal, one to carry out a mix of RF-modulated signals so that we can watch content from any source at any location in the house -- and we have more in reserve should we want to route, say, component video and digital audio out of that location to another display elsewhere in the home.

The passthrough jack arrangement is also remarkably flexible in terms of equipment placement; if cables are run directly out of the wall to where devices are, Murphy's law holds that sooner or later, you'll realize that you want to move all of the devices another five feet away, and that can be a mess. If instead you've used passthrough jacks, it becomes just a matter of buying a somewhat longer set of patch cords to go from the wall jacks to the equipment. Passthrough jacks are available in a variety of connector types, and that raises the question of what sorts of connections you'll want to make if you use passthroughs.

For some applications, it's fairly obvious; for speaker connections, for example, you'll probably want binding posts rather than any other connector type. But for other applications, what people tend to do is use the connector types they're most familiar with -- F for RF connections, RCA for audio and baseband video, mini-DINs for s-video. The best approach generally is to simplify the situation by using only one connector type for all of your coaxial-type passthrough jacks, and what we recommend is to use nothing but BNCs.

The BNC has the best locking characteristics of any of the commonly available connector types RCAs don't lock at all, and F connectors sometimes need to be tightened quite far to make solid and dependable connection. Since half of your connections are actually inside the wall and inaccessible, it's very nice to know that you don't have to worry about connections coming loose, and only the BNC provides really good assurance on that point. This will generally happen at connection points, and will massively increase resistance if left alone.

Silver has lower resistance than copper, but is obviously more expensive. Also, it oxidizes, so there are very few situations in which a silver wire will be better and more cost effective than a copper one. So the most important thing to remember when choosing the type of wire for your speaker system is that resistance is important, and you want it to be as low as possible. The wires inside are generally copper. Here are some other general tips to consider when choosing the correct wires, and for when you come to actually wiring the speaker system up.

When I first came to start wiring my home theater, I was overwhelmed by all the different factors you need to consider. Everything else should fall into place from these bits of information. The gauge of a wire refers to its thickness. The thicker the wire, the lower its gauge number, and the lower its resistance.

Wire gauge is given in four types: 12 gauge, 14 gauge, 16 gauge, and 18 gauge. For wire runs shorter than 50ft, gauge wire is generally the best to use.

You should use gauge wire for 8 ohm speakers, and thicker gauge wire for low impedance speakers such as 4 or 6 ohms. Also read this article by audioholics. Some wires will come with the right connectors, but if not, then use banana connectors, as these will make your life so much easier.

For my home theater system, which is in a relatively large room and has a surround sound system, I used 14 gauge copper wire with banana clips. The biggest thing to consider is that having wires lying around can be a major trip hazard. On top of this is the potential damage to wires from them getting stepped on, crushed by furniture, or being pulled from their connections.

All of this will have an impact on the lifespan of wires and the devices themselves. So, how do you hide wires for a home theater? They tend to be more expensive than coax cables. Knowing the right cables you need for installing a home theater is important. It enables you to get the best audio and visual experience possible. No more fumbling through a box of old cords or taking multiple trips to the store to get the proper connection.