We’ve moved into a new home, and it was pre-wired for home theater equipment. It was not pre-wired the way I would like, but most things I can work around. For example, the most logical location for the television is on the opposite side of the room from where all the speaker wires emerge from the wall. No problem, I’ve got an RF remote with IR extenders. I can deal.
The problem lies with the video cabling. From where the home theater components will be (except for the television), the contractor ran 4-5 lengths of RG-6, one length of speaker wire, and at least one CAT-5 to where the television will be placed. I could use three of the RG-6 cables to hook up component video, but that will only get me 720p resolution (right?), and while I don’t currently have a High-Definition DVD player, I’d like to plan for the day I will have one. Therefore I need cabling capable of transmitting a 1080i/p signal.
The obvious choice is to try to fish an HDMI cable across the room. There are a few can lights in the ceiling, and a lot of cable already run, and the ceiling joists are (I belive) open truss steel, so I think the combination of holes for the lights and existing cables may make it possible to do this without cutting any more holes in the ceiling. Obviously I won’t know for certain until I try.
Which leads me to my real question. Obviously RG-6 is capable of carrying the information necessary for HDTV, because that’s what carries the signal from the satellite dish to the satellite receiver. Is there some sort of gizmo available that would reformat the video signal such that I could use the existing RG-6 that was run, and then re-reformat it at the TV where I could use the HDMI connection? I’m probably phrasing this badly, so I hope you can understand the question.
My apologies for yet another HDTV question, but I didn’t see this one in the archives, and I haven’t found any answers Googling.
I’m not positive, but 95% sure the answer to this is no. The reason that they can use RG-6 from your cable company or satellite dish is because all the data is not only digital, but probably encoded as MPEG-4 (I think). Your tv can’t decode that directly. So once you’ve fed that RG-6 into the cable/satellite box, you’re stuck with the de-coded output. I’m also fairly sure that you can’t run HDMI cable that far. I know S-video has a distance limit. (Checks on google)…nope, HDMI is good, it’s DVI that you can’t run very far. It’s just going to cost you a lot for the cable. One other option you have is converting your video over to CAT5 and sending it that way. Something like this will work. I know we use something like that around were I work to route video signals over long distances.
Good Luck!
edited to add:
Just noticed you mentioned that you’ll be running several video signals over the RG-6. May I ask why? A decent stereo reciever will allow you to have multiple inputs and only one cable run out to the tv. This will save you losing quality in the converstion from composite to RG-6. Check out recievers that upconvert the signal to the hightest output level you’re using.
He wants to use the RG-6 to carry a component video signal, not composite.
The RG-6 will work, for that, but it is really overkill. All you really need is a set of 3 coax RCA cables. However, if the RG-6 is already there, go ahead and use it.
BTW, component video does support 1080i and 1080p, so you should be OK there.
Thanks for the reply - I thought component would only go to 720p. It made me do some research and, unless I read things wrong, the problem seems to be that, although component will transmit 1080i/p, most of the HD devices out there are only allowing 1080i/p through HDMI (something to do with copyright protection and the digital v/. analog formats).
You say you’ve got “at least one CAT5”. If you’re really determined and you have two available CAT5 cables, there exist things called “HDMI baluns” which allow you to run HDMI over a pair of CAT5 cables by sticking a little magic box at each end of the CAT5. Google HDMI balun and the first 10 hits you get are all for the same product sold by various places. Warning: ain’t cheap.
As a little background, a “balun” is a generic term for a set of little electronic devices which allow you to take a signal that travels on one type of cable and re-encode it in such a way that it works on a different type of cable, then convert it back to its original form on the other end. This is usually done to allow a signal to travel long distances without adverse interference or attenuation, but can also be used in some cases like yours where you just have the wrong type of cable. So what you want is an HDMI-over-CAT5 balun. It might be technically feasible to create an HDMI-over-RG6 balun, but then again, the characteristics of RG6 might make it impossible or really difficult to achieve the necessary signaling rates, so it might be impossible or prohibitively expensive. I’m no signaling engineer.
Technically a balun is a device which converts a balanced signal to an unbalanced signal, or vice versa, frequently changing the impedance while it’s at it. The classic balun is used to convert an unbalanced audio signal (like, say, from an electric guitar) to something you can feed into a balanced mic input.
But yeah, ‘balun’ has slowly become genericized to mean pretty much any converting of one sort of signal to another sort.
I would vote for just using the RG-6 for component lines for the time being, and worry about 1080p when you actually get an HD-DVD in the future. It’s entirely possible they’ll switch cable formats again, and if you go to great lengths to fish an hdmi cable into your ceiling they’ll probably pick a new format the very next day, just to piss you off.
But really, what you should do is put in a nice big screen, and mount a projector above the rest of the home theatre equipment, which would give you a nice short cable run.
A pre-wired run of 4 RG-6, a single speaker cable and one or more Cat 5 isn’t illogical at all. It’s actually very logical from the perspective of what was common say, five years ago.
Three of the coax would be dedicated to carrying a component video signal, the fourth would carry standard composite video, the speaker cable is for the center channel speaker, and the Cat5 may have been for a remote control relay receiver - you’d point the remote at the TV, and the relay would carry the commands to the equipment rack at the back of the room.
For the OP - have you tried pulling on one or more of the cables to see if they’re loose in the walls and ceiling? If they are, tie a cord to one of those “extra” Cat5 cables and if you can get the cord to show up at the other end, your life is looking pretty good and you’re all set to pull an HDMI cable. The probably worst-case scenario is that the cables are zip-tied to the trusses and immobile, in which case, you’ll need to make a couple holes here or there to guide the HDMI cable along its way from one wall to the other.
Thanks for the detailed reply, but what I was getting at was that the OP seems to think that his preferred location for the TV is more logical than that of the original designer. I’m wondering about the previous owner’s thinking, and whether the OP might reconsider his arrangement, thus avoiding all this trouble.
Sorry if this is resurrecting a zombie thread, but I was out of town for a while.
We are the first owners of this unit. It is a somewhat typical Chicago condo layout - living room and dining room are one large common space, with a small balcony on the west end of the living room, and the kitchen on the east end. The south wall of the living room has a gas fireplace, above which is a recess which contains an electrical outlet and the bare ends of the aforementioned cables. The north wall is where these cables, plus the speaker wire from the ceiling, terminate. This leads me to believe that the “intent” was for the TV to be wall-mounted above the fireplace, with the remaining A/V components kept somewhere on the opposite wall.
Actually, I think our solution is going to wind up being to put everything, TV and components, on the north wall, and hang a nice picture over the fireplace. But thanks for all the input everyone, it really has helped.
As someone who has pulled in wires in exactly that configuration a few times, I can tell you that a plasma over the fireplace was definitely the intent. I can also tell you that over the fireplace is just too damn high for comfortable viewing. But it looks snazzy when you walk through the show home, or something. I heartily endorse the picture over the fireplace idea.
Thanks for the clarification (and sorry I didn’t read the OP closely enough). So your objection to the contractor’s design is what Gorsnak said: the TV over the fireplace is too high?
But doesn’t that mean that you’re going to set whatever sofa and chairs you have in your TV viewing area with their backs to the fireplace? What’s the north-south dimension of the room?
In general, putting the components next to the TV seems a better and simpler idea than having them on the opposite wall, whatever the layout of the room.
