Another one for the A/V guys: Structured Wiring

[Matt Meiser]

I got a lot of good responses to my subwoofer thread so I've got more A/V related questions.

Since we moved to this house I've been planning to install some kind of structured wiring system. I'm not planning to use one of those fancy media panels but I want to use a similar concept. So far I've run CAT5e cabling (4 cables, need 2-4 more) to my home office and 2 RG6 cables to there as well while I was at it. There's a few CAT5e cables run to various locations for specific purposes as well. Phone, and antenna wiring are a mish-mash of stuff installed before me. Satellite wiring was installed by DirecTVs installers. I'd like to clean everything up and bring everything back to a dedicated network closest under my basement stairs. I'm hoping to tackle this over the winter.

For phone and network, I plan to run all CAT5e cable and use all RJ45 jacks. That way any jack can be repurposed by just plugging the other end of that run into the Ethernet swtich or a "telephone hub" which is just a patch panel with all the jacks wired in parallel. I'll run at least 2 to each location for phone/network. At the main TV location, I'll run an extra CAT5 in anticipation of some kind of future media device in addition to one for the DVR. For any fixed equipment needing Ethernet, I want to use a wired signal since I plan to move my wireless access points outside my firewall for security.

I'm really confused after reading on various sites on the web what I should do for video. There's pretty much no chance we'll ever get cable so satellite will be it the forseeable future. What I'd really like is to have the analog outputs of my AV receiver go to a modulator to rebroadcast to any other TV in the house. At each of the other TV locations I'd like to be install a satellite receiver, use the antenna, and tune to that rebroadcast signal.

I think at the main TV location I need 2 RG6 for the satellite signals to the DVR (2 tuners), 1 for an antenna signal coming in, and 1 for returning the modulated signal (with antenna) to the wring closet.

I'm not sure how the switch to DTV affects doing that. All the modulators I've found use the analog frequencies. I'm assuming new TV's a year or two from now won't have analog tuners making those modulators pretty useless. Or maybe they will since low power stations will continue to broadcast in analog? There seem to be a wide array of modulators and I'm not sure how to choose one.

I've also seen Multiswitches that allow bringing in the 3 LNBs from the dish plus an antenna (or I assume modulator output?) and redistributing to 8 locations via 1 RG6 cable. I don't understand how you split that signal back apart at the TV. Another option would be to just run 1 RG6 for satellite signal and 1 RG6 for RF signal (output of the modulator) to each location.

I'm not planning to install any fiber or audio wiring at this time. The house is a ranch with a full basement so running future wiring is pretty easy. But I do want to fully install each system as I need them so the telephone, network, and

[Brian Willan]

Hey Matt

For your TV/video needs, you may want to consider a central PVR solution. MythTV, SageTV, GBPVR, BeyondTV etc. That will allow you to have centralized recording for any input type Satellite/Antenna etc. For the end viewing points you can get devices like the MediaMVP (SageTV has their own (HD)box for this) that will connected via ethernet to the main server and stream your content to the device for viewing. The beauty of doing this is that all you have to run is CAT5e cable or equivalent to each viewing location. All of the incoming receivers and antenna cabling is handled at a central point as well as the main PVR server itself.

Cheers

Brian

[Jim Becker]

Ideally, you want all your video runs to home-run back to a single distribution point, the same way you (should be) handle the LAN/phone cables. Aside from the convenience, some media services...let's say DirectTV...don't deal well with splitters (at all, at least normal ones) so central distribution solves that issue. It also makes it easier to do things like Brian suggests if you want to go that far.

In our home, I had to do two distribution points; a main and a remote. When we added our addition, it didn't make financial sense to home-run everything back to the main panel in the original house. This works just great. The only downside is that I only ran one main RG6 feeder and when the DirectTV was installed I found out that limited service to one device at the old end of the house due to the no splitter situation. (Yea, you can "get" splitters that have the right frequency ranges that will work with D-TV, but they are not something you can buy down at the corner shopping center) It's not an issue for us functionally as there is only the kitchen to service. And when we eventually get FiOS, the problem goes away.

I'm using traditional 110 patch panels for the LAN/phone distribution. Leviton I believe, at least for the addition. I don't recall what brand I used on the original main panel.

[Matt Meiser]

For phone/Ethernet I'm not currently using patch panels. I just terminated each run with an RJ45 plug and plug it into the switch directly or to a small patch panel that I wired so all the jacks are in parallel with each other for a phone "hub". I didn't see much point in the patch panels because it would have required a bunch of extra patch cords in addition to the patch panels.

I will be doing homeruns for everything. Heck, if I had to replumb my house I'd probably do homeruns with PEX for the water. :)

[Brian Elfert]

I'm not sure what structured wiring really means except to sell a bunch of overpriced stuff.

I built a new house in 2001 and wired it myself. I ran two cat5e, two cat 3 (voice), fiber optic, and two quad shield RG6 cables to every room. The living room got multiple outlets along with the master bedroom.

Everything is home run to the basement utility room. I do have patch panels as solid cable does not handle modular connectors well.

The fiber cable was a waste of time as it turns out that copper can handle just about anything that a home will ever have speed wise. I should have run cat5e for everything instead of cat 3, but I have not yet needed more than two cat5e in one location.

I have cable TV today, but I figured that Dish or DirectTV should be able to be cross connected in the utility room. I also ran a bundle of RG6 cables from the utility room to the attic for future sat TV, but I shuudder to think of ever going into an attic full of blown in fiberglass.

[Christopher Stahl]

You should only need one RG-6 these days. The days of needing two for satellite are on their way out. DirecTV uses SWM equipment for single wire and I believe Dish has something similar. I'm currently using the SWM equipment and it's nice not needing two connections for dual tuners.

[Rob Russell]

When we did the addition on our house, I went nuts running all sort of wiring for cable and stuff like that. (2) RG6 Quad shield, Cat-5 for telephone and Cat-5E for network. It was a waste of time and money. The networking is now all wireless. Phones are typically wireless from a base station. The only thing to run is the RG6 Quad Shield for video.

[Mitchell Andrus]

The best thing you can do is to run empty conduit so you can pull what you need to later on.

I ran phone lines to my kids rooms in 1991 and then closed the walls. Never been touched. By the time they needed phones, cells were in and dial-up modems were out. Now even the computer is wireless.

Who knows what you'll need in a few years?

[Brian Elfert]

I prefer to keep my networking wired as it seems to be more reliable. We have several consumer grade access points at work that need rebooting at least once a week. (We use consumer grade stuff only for our Comcast Internet for testing things.)

If I was building new I would still install Cat5e. If I moved to an older house then I would look seriously at wireless.

[Scott Myers]

I don't agree with the wireless over CAT5e hard wire recommendations as a blanket statement. It depends on what kind of a user you are and how big your home is. If you do a lot of large file transfers, backing up /archiving to a network drive, multi-media streaming, cross computer file sharing, etc., then totally wireless IS NOT the way to go. We do these things constantly in our home and can tell you from experience that wireless is a bottleneck for those things in many instances. If you are just a "casual" computer user and you surf the net and don't utilize your home network for any real high bandwidth data transfers very often, then wireless is fine. If you have a big home, you might need two routers or one of the $$$ commercial units for full coverage to keep speed up throughout your house.

With the world of networked multimedia devices really starting to come of age, I can't begin to say what kind of bandwidth one will need. But I can envision HD television file streaming that could be a REAL bandwidth hog on a home network. (Video is already being run over CAT5e, but it is more common in commercial applications. We do it at our church.) Something like that could really bring a wireless home network to its knees. It will be interesting to see where all this goes in the future. Currently, I think most of us now just utilize the cable coming in from the dish and then home run out from our central distribution point. That is what the current practice is.

As far as structured wiring goes, I wouldn't go there in my own home. It's too expensive. It's nice from a contractors standpoint in that you don't really know what the home owner is going to want, so you just put in this expensive "do everything" wire and home run it to a central point. It make for a nice "selling feature" I suppose. Other than that, I don't think too much of it.

[Matt Meiser]

After some more reading, I think the name "structured wiring" has a lot of meanings. One place I read suggests that structured wiring is a single bundle of 2 CAT5 and 2 RG6, optionally with 2 fibers. I'm not doing that. But I do want a centralized system for voice, data, and video.

For the phones, we have one of the 5.8GHz wireless phone systems. But we still need jacks for the base unit, both DirecTV recievers, my office line's base unit, my office multifunction machine, and 1-2 Old School (you know, the kind with a wire between the handset and base?) phones.

I definitely want a wired networking infrastructure. I do move a lot of big files, especially doing backups but we also have a Windows Home Server so all our files are on that machine. Right now, in addition to wireless coverage for the whole house I have a wireless link between my shop and the house using two routers, one in "bridge" mode. That link is very noticeably slower than anything wired despite having excellent signal due to upgraded antennas.

I also worry about security on the wireless network. Three things would have to happen for someone to get access--first they would have to be within range of my signal. I suspect my neighbors can see my network since I see theirs. Second, they would have to hack the security on the network--easily done. Third they would have to hack the security on my server--an unknown. Ultimately I plan to use my routers' VPN functionality to move the wireless access points outside of my firewall and require VPN to gain access to the network. I don't want to have to do that all the time.

Scott, what does that central distribution point for video look like--that is my main confusion--do I use one of those multiswitches and a modulator or ???

[Scott Myers]

Matt,

I am no expert on how this is best done. I know it depends quite heavily on what equipment you have, whether it be cable, satellite with "legacy" equipment or current standards. You'll ahve to contact your supplier of your dish equipment for the particulars. I my particular case, it is pretty simple... or so I thought until I began to type this. Then I realized that it is pretty complex if yo uare not familiar with it all.

A cable comes in from the satellite dish and goes to a "multi-switch". (I'm on Dish Network.) From this central point, it branches out to my various tuners in different rooms. I believe it will be similar for Direct TV. For cable, it is probably just a splitter that is required instead of a multi-switch, but I could be wrong, as I am not familiar with current cable boxes as I ahven't been on cable in 9 years.

The other thing I have going on is I have a large 8' channel master "off-air" antenna in my attic, to pick up the 40+ local digital HD channels in my area. I ran this cable from the antenna to a small amplifier followed by a splitter at that same central distribution point that the multi switch is located. From there, the cables for the "off air" goes out to each tuner also, which each have an off air tuner built in. So each tuner box has the dish cable coming in and the off-air cable coming in. There may be a better way for doing this now, but when I did it 5 years ago, this is what I went with.

Note that I have two cables running from each point where a tuner box goes back to the central distribution point. I can use the second cable either to pick-up the off-air antenna and feed it to the tuner or I can use it to run the built in second standard definition tuner back to the central distribution point and feed it to some other television somewhere else in the house. If I would have wanted to be able to handle the off-air, the satellite plus feeding back the second tuner output at each box, it would have required 3 cables at each wall plate!!! That's a bit nuts.

What I realized as I started to install is that with each box having the DVR or high definition TV (which is all I have anymore), I didn't want the standard definition output anyway (which looks like crap on a HD TV) and I did want the off-air at each TV, so all I need is the two cables at each wall plate routed back to the central point. So each TV requires its own tuner box, two cables and inherent HDMI cable output to feed the TV or entertainment system. (Yes, HDMI is another cabling issue within itself.)

Of course the computers with their CAT5e wiring all runs on its own system wiring network which actually all home runs from a different central point in my home. (I would put the computer switch and run the CAT5e to the same central point today, if I had it to do over.)

Do note that modern dish tuners, blueray DVD and all future electronics will require a CAT5e wire run to them. It is getting a bit nuts. I found I had to install a little mini-switch behind my entertainment system to be able to handle the various devices that required an internet connection. A little "big brotherish", but that is the way of it now. So plan accordingly for your home entertainment area. Either multiple network jacks or a network switch will be required.

With all the cabling & tuners, I do expect this to all go away eventually and be replaced by some type of integrated networked system. (I'm talking years down the road here.) The wiring that is required currently is extensive to set-up a whole house to be able to handle networked multi-media at it exists currently. A networked multi-media system can be done, but it is still pretty price prohibitive the last time I checked to get the bandwidth you would want. It is done today on the commercial world to some degree. Once it becomes more main stream, the equipment more integrated and the price comes down, I might jump on board. (Hence, no fiber for me as it costs too much currently and copper is good enough for home purposes.) But what I have works for what I want it for.

A word of advice on the "free" satellite installation. (You may already be aware of this issue.) This is a beautiful case of "you get what you pay for", or in this case, what you don't pay for. Install you own cable(s) and mast on your house. The free installation includes them coming in and just drilling holes for the shortest path to the tuner boxes. Forget hiding wires, drip loops under eaves, or the like. They also have a tendency to just put the dish right through the roof and the shingles, which is about stupid. I would suggst you install your own equipment and then let them tune it in.

One other thing I have in my house is an intercom system. I did not integrate this into my network, as you now can and could when I installed mine. Nor did I go wireless. I decided to stay analog hardwire on this. (I don't know if you have any intentions on something like this.) The reason is the sensitivity and sound quality. The good analog systems have quite decent sound. No static, not tinny, works well, no drop-out, etc. So this too required its own wiring system throughout the house. Today, the networked intercoms might be better than they were 8 years ago. But this of course would mean an even larger (or more) network switch.



Scott, what does that central distribution point for video look like--that is my main confusion--do I use one of those multiswitches and a modulator or ???

[Peter Stahl]

Scott, What do you mean by cable for the "off air".

[Peter Stahl]

[QUOTE=Scott Myers;998598]Matt,

Do note that modern dish tuners, blueray DVD and all future electronics will require a CAT5e wire run to them. It is getting a bit nuts. I found I had to install a little mini-switch behind my entertainment system to be able to handle the various devices that required an internet connection. A little "big brotherish", but that is the way of it now. So plan accordingly for your home entertainment area. Either multiple network jacks or a network switch will be required.


Scott,

I thought the Blu-Ray players used HDMI cables? Will they have a typical RJ45 connector on the ends?

[Scott Myers]

"Off-Air" refers to the broadcast signals for your local channels that you can pick up with an antenna that are sent through the air via air broadcast. So "off-air" refers to those signals. (Not avery good name for those signals, but that is what someone somewhere decided to call them and it stuck.) Most of the better satellite receiver/tuner boxes have a connector for another piece of coax to accept the input for an antenna so you can watch your local channels. If you have a HD tuner box that has this off-air input, it will feed those channels that are broadcast right to the TV seamlessly with the standard satellite channels. So when you go to your guide, you will see these "off-air" channels right along with your satellite channels. If you have a DVR, you can record those off-air channels as well as the satellite channels. At least that is how the current Dish Network HD DVR boxes work. I would assume the Direct TV is about the same. (Although I don't like their menu system interface as well, but this is just a personal preference thing.) The other really cool thing is most of the digital broadcast channels also send the program info (show rating, brief synopsis, etc.) so you can also see this in the menu when surfing around. It truly is seamless.

Prior to Satellite tuners having the off-air tuner built in, you would have to run the off-air signal directly to your TV/entertainment system and then jump back and forth between inputs on the TV or entertainment system and choose whether you wanted to view the satellite or antenna. It was a nusance. The current dual tuner boxes with seamless integration is leaps and bounds better.

That's the long and the short of "off-air" when used with HD satellite tuners.


Scott, What do you mean by cable for the "off air".

[Scott Myers]

Peter,

You are correct. Blue-Ray, HD Satellite boxes, and other HD output devices do use HDMI.

HOWEVER, they also have RJ45 jacks on the back. My Dish Network recievers require that they be connected to the internet viw their RJ45 in order to update themselves every night. If you don't do this, they charge you an extra $5 per month as it has to be done by phone line. (You are still supposed to keep it hooked up to a phone line for PPV and other features.) The other reason you want it is that then you can do movies on demand, which is different from PPV.

In the case of my new Blue-Ray players, they want the access for firmware upgrades, which may be required from time to time.

In the case of a Wii game, you have to have it if you want to use the huge number of features avaialbe on a Wii that requires internet access.

I can go on, but you get the idea. Modern entertainment equipment will often require an internet connection via a RJ45 jack.

Like I said, its a cabling fiasco. I'll personaly be glad when we get out of this infantile stage of home entertainment and everything is more integrated on how signals are transmitted.


[quote=Scott Myers;998598]
Scott,

I thought the Blu-Ray players used HDMI cables? Will they have a typical RJ45 connector on the ends?

[Peter Stahl]

Peter,

You are correct. Blue-Ray, HD Satellite boxes, and other HD output devices do use HDMI.

HOWEVER, they also have RJ45 jacks on the back. My Dish Network recievers require that they be connected to the internet viw their RJ45 in order to update themselves every night. If you don't do this, they charge you an extra $5 per month as it has to be done by phone line. (You are still supposed to keep it hooked up to a phone line for PPV and other features.) The other reason you want it is that then you can do movies on demand, which is different from PPV.

In the case of my new Blue-Ray players, they want the access for firmware upgrades, which may be required from time to time.

In the case of a Wii game, you have to have it if you want to use the huge number of features avaialbe on a Wii that requires internet access.

I can go on, but you get the idea. Modern entertainment equipment will often require an internet connection via a RJ45 jack.

Like I said, its a cabling fiasco. I'll personaly be glad when we get out of this infantile stage of home entertainment and everything is more integrated on how signals are transmitted.

[quote=Peter Stahl;999476]

Thanks Scott, thought the cat5 was for the regular Video signal. Looked at Blu-ray players and HD TV's and did see the LAN connections. Wasn't sure what they were for but you explained that well.