[RaceyBoy]

Hello all,

We're looking to decorate our living room over the course of the next month or so. I'm not going for anything overly flash (although some of the amazing setups and ideas on here nearly changed); I only wish to mount our 42" plasma on the wall above a unit holding our AV kit.

I plan to chase cables into the wall, through conduit/trunking and install a socket with brushes at top and bottom to tidy up the cabling 'exits'.

However, I have a number of questions and require some advice if you could all be so kind:

- Do I need to run a seperate channel for power or can I run it in the same channel. I would prefer to put it in the same one but only if it doesn't have any detrimental effects.

- Can the channel be run up to the middle of where the TV is due to be mounted, avoiding the bracket of course?

- What is the ideal/suggested height to mount a TV - I've read 100cm between the floor and bottom of the screen?

- What cables do people suggest I run into the channel? Should I run all possible cables that connect to my screen (42PZ80), i.e. 2 scarts, 2 HDMIs, Component or should I stick with 2 HDMI, one scart and one power?

- Can someone point me in the direction of a simple (dark) wood cabinet to house my Sky, Sony Blu-Ray player and Denon unit. I would actually like to hide away the kit if I can and use an IR reciever but I haven't decided that for certain.

- Can someone point me in the direction of the brushed sockets to install at either end of the trunking.

Thanks a lot folks.

[Davyhulme]

Hello,

From my experience...

-Power and signal cables shouldn't run alongside each other ideally. Shield the signal cables or keep them apart from the power and only allow them to cross at right angles.

-It's useful to have some slack when lifting the thing on and off the wall. Maybe have the cable exit away from the sockets with a couple of feet spare across the back of the tv. Or, chase a wide channel so the cables just fall down out of the way when you lift it back on to the wall

-From your sofa, look straight ahead at the wall. This ideally is the middle of the picture. If you want to have it higher, think about tilting the screen down so the glass is still around 90 degrees to your eye line.

-I've got 2 HDMI and 1 scart. Apart from component, you can send pretty much everything over those. I use my amp to switch component, svideo etc to the HDMI so hopefully this is all I'll ever need.

-Sorry, don't know about cabinets.

-I used a desk cable tidy / grommet for this.

Cheers.

[Davyhulme]

Had a thought. Before you start on the chasing, try taping the power cables to the signal cables and watching for a while and then try them apart. If you can't tell the difference, there's your answer.

[RaceyBoy]

Thanks Davyhulme,

Am I to assume if I were to do as you kindly suggest and tape all of the cables together including the power cable and it makes no different to the PQ, it will be absolutely fine and it won't, say, get worse over time.

I wouldn't want to test it as you say, put it in the channel and then realise a year down the line that the PQ has got worse.

Many thanks for your response.

[sgt_raffie]

If You have a choice I wouldn`t put power and signal in the same trunking. I`m sure You might not see the diffrence first but You might start noticing it later. I did run power cable next to vga cable on my car pc install and it gave some interferance.
Having 2 channels gives You more flexibility if You will want to expand the system as it will be easier to push more wires through 2 channels than one.
But I`m a newbie in AV world, I`m sure more knowledgable people will be here shortly.

Raf

[RaceyBoy]

Thanks Sgt Raffie.

I'm unlikely to want to expand the system in this house. I can only forsee me and my partner being here for another couple of years so I'm not too worried about scalability.

I'm mainly concerned with PQ and obviously the aesthetics of the room.