What wires should i pull pre drywall?

[jabroneez]

Building a HT room. What types of wires should I pull? Should I pull...lets say an extra cat 5? Maybe an extra rg-6 or hdmi. Its a Front projection system. Do I need to pull a cat 5 to my dimmers if I want to use a universal controller (like logitechs 1000) to control the lights too. Thanks for your input.

[zepman1]

It depends what you are trying to do and where everything is located. From what you say it appears you have a front projection system and want to set up an IR device near your screen to control the components which are hidden away out of range.

If this is the case you want Cat5 from your IR receiver which would run to wherever your IR hub is located. You need to run, at a minimum, HDMI cable from the components location to the projector. You may need some other cables here as well depending on what you want to accomplish. You need to pull speaker wire through walls to all the speaker locations from the AVR. That's PROBABLY about it unless I am forgetting something.

You may want to leave some room for future expanding by putting in a piece of tubing through the studs with gang plates at the ends so you can easily pull more wires later.

As far as the dimmers go, that all depends. I think you can do it with CAT 5, and run it with a Harmony or something similar. There are also dimmer switches with a built in IR sensor, that the harmony can control (not all models can do this). In this case you would need no CAT5 to the dimmers.

[GMichael]

Good advice here.

OP,

Be sure to note the part about putting in a conduit for future upgrades. You never know what will be the latest and greatest 10 years from now. Give yourself this option.

[zepman1]

Hopefully my advice is somewhat helpful. I am certainly no expert, and hopefully someone else can give their 2 cents. I will be doing the same thing in the coming months, so I am interested to see how others are going about the process.

Another thought I had is about the HDMI run. Be careful about how long you make that because for one thing long HDMI cables are expensive. But, more importantly, after about 25 feet I think, they tend to become unreliable. Even the good ones. I am hoping to limit my run to 20' max for HDMI. Just something to think about when locating the projector and the AV rack.

I am looking to get a front projector and have the AV rack somewhere out of the way, so I will mount a IR sensor (in wall flush mount probably) to control everything just under the screen. I don't think I am going to use remote controlled dimmers though, I'll go old school and just adjust them by hand. Besides, that's what the wife is for, right?

[Feanor]

Building a HT room. What types of wires should I pull? Should I pull...lets say an extra cat 5? Maybe an extra rg-6 or hdmi. Its a Front projection system. Do I need to pull a cat 5 to my dimmers if I want to use a universal controller (like logitechs 1000) to control the lights too. Thanks for your input.

No expert me, but I think you should be careful to select "plenum grade", in-wall certified cabling to avoid bylaw violations and fire risk.

My guess is you'd be covered off with the coax, (is it RG-6 or RG-59?), plus Cat5e or Cat6, and HDMI. If I'm not mistake the practical limit for HD over HDMI is about 50 feet(?).

[zepman1]

No expert me, but I think you should be careful to select "plenum grade", in-wall certified cabling to avoid bylaw violations and fire risk.

My guess is you'd be covered off with the coax, (is it RG-6 or RG-59?), plus Cat5e or Cat6, and HDMI. If I'm not mistake the practical limit for HD over HDMI is about 50 feet(?).


The 25' I mentioned is a pretty conservative limit, but one I would personally stick to it as much as possible to avoid future problems with 1080p, deep color and advanced audio codecs. I am sure you can go longer. 50' seems like an extreme upper limit and I think 30-40' is safe with a good quality cable. No one is sure, and I just wanted to point out it is something to be strongly considered. The longest HDMI 1.3a certified cable is 45' long.

See:

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/how-long-can-hdmi-run.htm?hdmidept

Oh yeah, and the comment about coax reminds me... Consider a likely location of your subwoofer relative to the AV rack. You might want to run a sub cable in the wall to this location with an RCA wall plate. I like to use RG-6 coax for long sub cable runs with F-type/RCA adapters at each end. Its cheap and very effective for long runs.

[blackraven]

The top of the line Bluejean HDMI cable has passed the 50ft test and is a top quality cable. I use BJ HDMI's and they perform well and are well made and they wont break your piggy bank!