How do you hide wall mounted tv cables?

[mpjsharp]

I am in the process of plastering my house which will be complete in a few weeks. In a few months I will be looking to purchase and lcd screen and hang it on the fireplace wall.

In order to avoid unsightly cabling. I am looking to install some type of conduit within the wall to hide the cables in.

The problem I have is, at this moment I dont know which LCD set I will be purchasing therefore i dont know how many cable will be coming from the back and in which direction the cables will come from inorder to support my other home entertainment equipment.

-Is there a specific wall mounted tv cabling solution?
-Is there a standard direction that the ports run out of at the back of an LCD TV?
-If I was looking to run a sky box, dvd player, VCR, games console, powercable, and home theatre system into the TV, what size conduit would I need?

 

[BMXTRIX]

Alright... You probably should talk to a local A/V specialist on this, but here is what I would do.

1. Run a 3/4" piece of conduit to the TV location.

2. Find a universal mount that you will actually purchase and that will determine where the conduit and wires will be run to. Since no flat panel TV actually sits DIRECTLY against the wall, you want the wires to be run to just below the mount, then you can route them into the display wherever the connectors are. Many are on the far bottom, but some are along the sides. All should be far enough behind the display to hide your cabling as it wraps around.

3. You absolutely should run: 1 component video cable, 1 s-video cable, and 1 composite video cable. All 6 of these cables can actually be RG-6 coaxial cable and then converted to RCA connectors on the end. Run them NOW as you absolutely, positively KNOW you will eventually need them - or at least component and composite.

4. If you want to use DVI or HDMI, then find a cable long enough NOW - run it now.

5. Get POWER to the LCD location, just under the mount, a few inches away from where the cables are going to be run.

6. If you are going to use surround sound in the room, then run speaker wire - NOW.

7. If you have an unfinished basement below the room, then that is where you should run the cables to - then back up a wall in the room where the equipment is actually going to live. You really should try to figure out where the equipment is going to live... once again - now.

8. If you absolutely don't want to run the wires now - then I would only use a 2" piece of conduit to handle all possibilities.

9. Oh, if you don't plan on using a surround setup, but want to use the speakers inside the LCD/plasma... I would change my mind. You will have to have an FPD will enough inputs to handle everything you want to hook up and you will have to have enough video AND audio feeds for all of those products. Financially speaking, an A/V receiver (surround or stereo) is a good purchase for your room, even if you don't use the amplifier inside the receiver.

What is a sky box?

 

[Duffinator]

To throw another wrench into your setup, if you are looking at a Sharp LCD some come with an AVC (audio video computer). From the AVC to the screen the only connections are a DVI cable, audio, and power cord. Most pre-terminated DVI cables are not going to fit through 3/4" conduit. I believe there are some other sets, including plasmas, that use a similar remote box for all A/V connections. So you may need a large enough conduit or pipe run in the wall to pass a DVI cable or you will have to terminate it yourself.

 

[mpjsharp]

thanks alot for the advice

all the best.

 

[mpjsharp]

cheers for the help. very useful.