Advice needed for fitting a HD TV & projector

[stephen1000]

Hello all,

Firstly I have no/very limited knowledge of installing HD TVs or projectors and would be very grateful for any help or advice you guys or girls can offer me. Thanks in advance.

I am in the process of totally renovating a flat I have just bought. I need advice about which cables I will need to run between a ceiling mounted projector and a sky hd box or virgin box etc. My plan is to have a reasonable sized plasma on the tv wall and then a screen which comes down in front of this when I want to use a projector.

The sky/virgin box will be in one corner of the room within a couple of meters of where the plasma will be. I will mount the projector at the back of the room on the ceiling about 4 meters away. I need to chase the cables for the projector and the TV into a wall and then run them in the celling for the projector. I dont have a clue about which cables I need apart from 2 good quality HDMI cables. I have heard of CAT5 or CAT6? but have no knowledge of these or whether I need them. Also how would I set up the audio to this? as I would like to have surround sound which would need to be able to output sound when watching the projector or the TV, or using a PS3.

I have not decided what projector to get as of yet but will have a budget of between £1500-2000 for everything needed.

The room will need to be plastered very soon and I want to know which cables I should run to the projector. Im assuming that a plasma TV will only require having a power cable and a HDMI cable to be chased into the wall?

If I have asked any really dumb questions please accept my apologies in advance. I would be VERY greatful for any advice or help that anyone can offer me.

Cheers

 

[richsmif]

As for HDMI leads.....i bought this but you could use shorter lengths for equipment.

ebay link

For your projector, i'd prob go with this cable...

link

As for networking, i'd use cat 6 everytime, purely because its future proofed, each pair is twisted (same as cat 5) but cat 6 they are shielded individually so provide better interference protection and also provide longer signal lengths.

You could of course, use 2x cat 6 cables and hdmi-over ethernet units to provide projector signal but this will be more costly.

Cannot advise on projectors as i never went down this route, maybe in the next house.

As for amps, i use a Onkyo TX-SR607 which has HDMI switching. See the link......Now replaced with 608.
This would provide you with all your HD audio/and HDMI switching in your AV cabinet with outputs only to your TV/Projector. 607 only has 1 output, so you'd need a ACTIVE splitter.....sure more expensive Onkyo's have dual outputs, others will confirm.

Make sure you run a cat 6 cable to the TV area aswell as your AV corner as TV's are now coming with network ability for web surfing, youtube etc etc. Mine is a panasonic 46" G20 plasma and that has Viera link which gives you youtube, twitter, weather, supposed to have bbc Iplayer but not seen it yet.

Run a few cat 6's to your av corner for your amp (online streaming web radio), PS3 for wired connection to internet, sky HD for on demand content, HTPC if you have one etc. As cat 6 is rather cheap, your better off overspeccing as it will be hassle free later. I ran 8 leads to my av corner. lol.

You want to get this right first time, once that plasterer has been, thats it....
Trust me, im at that terrifying stage now!! lol

 

[stephen1000]

richsmif,

Thankyou very much for your reply. I think that as you say it is better to overspec than under spec. As you say once the plasterer has been there is no going back.

I would be greatful if anyone else may have anthing else to add to that.

Once again thanks in advance.

 

[FluffyKeith]

Hi

Dual hdmi out from the amp is probably out of budget. I am also installing pj and tv and have used a neet splitter - they seem to work ok.
use hdmi or cat6 but as mentioned cat6 is more costly with the converters and you need two cables - which will probably not be enough in the future as hdmi seems to be getting faster.

k