New Media Closet

[cshortreed]

I'm putting together my media closet and have been researching for quite some time before biting the bullet. Well, this weekend I'm finally going to start running my conduit from the basement to the attic to start this project.

My question is about cabling. Certainly others have asked the same question and I'm sorry if I'm repeating another thread but I haven't found the exact answer on any existing thread yet.

QUESTION 1: Currently I have done a home-run for about 80% of my house to the garage. Now I want it in the basement. In order to save on having to re-home all of these runs I thought I might pull it from the garage and put patch panels in the attic, then run from the PP to the basement. I know I can do this with all my Cat5 but is it safe to do this with RG6 coax?

QUESTION 2: I've been seeing that typical installations have 2 RG6 and 2 CAT5 in each room. I'm probably going to buy the Audio Authority HDTV system that uses 2 CAT5's to distribute HDTV. That would take all of the CAT5 cable to each location I want HDTV. Should I then plan to run 4 CAT5 to each location for future upgrades since it seems most of the new stuff is running over CAT5?

QUESTION 3: For whole house audio, I'm thinking the only real solution is to run speaker cable (heavy guage likely) to each location that I want music, is there a better way to do this? I'm planning on running JRMC on a server using a multiple output sound card to drive each set of speakers (probably 5 zones). The card is RCA out, but I can create pigtails that will allow me to run a speaker cable directly into each L/R of each zone on the PC.

Thanks for your input!

 

[BMXTRIX]

You can put splices in line with RG-6 cabling without it being a big deal. You will obviously want to carefully consider your video routing options and keep in mind that you will need accompanying audio for your video sources and how you are going to get those to the rooms should be of consideration.

The audio distribution side should consist of speaker wire to every room using a 14/4 wire (most often) that will go back to a multi-channel amplifier. The amplifier will be fed from your source - which sounds like the PC setup you are thinking of. I am unfamiliar with JRMC so can't say how well it will or won't work, but the RCA audio outputs from the setup are called 'line level' outputs. You must amplify those outputs so that they can run the speakers. Similar to how your computer speakers have internal amplifiers that must be plugged into the wall. Each pair of speakers that you want as an independent channel must have their own amplification. So, something like the Sonanace 1230 amplifier or some other 12 channel amp is appropriate for up to 6 stereo zones (12 speakers = 12 channels of amplification).

There are many other considerations depending on what you wish to accomplish and it definitely matters the level of expertise of those who will be using the system and how much they will have to go through to get the results they want. That is - it should be no more difficult to go into any room in your home and turn on the TV than it is when you just run a cable line right into the TV. If it is more difficult than that, then what's the point?

 

[jcPanny]

Video wiring

I am not a home install expert, but I am more familiar with video signals over RG6 coax cable. 2 coax = svideo and 3 coax = component video.

 

[BMXTRIX]

It appears that you are looking at the Audio Authority 9870 model? If so, then that looks like a solid piece and will get ONE HD component source from your head end to multiple rooms. But it only appears to handle component video and it is a single source to multi-location (2 max) distribution amplifier. This may or may not be ideal for your setup depending on your needs/wishes.

Dealing with HD distribution through a home can be a fairly costly proposition and because of all the different video formats, things can be, at the very least, convoluted.

I am not sure, but there really needs to be some products like the 9870 that include transcoding from composite/s-video to component and allow for matrix switching in the process. But, that's not exactly a cheap way to do things.

In my home I ran a couple of runs of mini-high resolution cable to multiple locations. Each run of mini-hr cable consists of 5 pieces of mini RG-59 cable and can carry HD signals over it for distribution. So, two runs delivers component video w/audio and composite video w/audio if I want. I actually just run component video to the locations though as almost all my gear is HD at this point. I then use an Extron Matrix switcher to switch between multiple HD sources and have speakers in every room (15 sets) for audio distribution.

Fun stuff!