LMAO. I would strongly argue it's coincidence.....however there IS a tiny bit of physics in there, as the knot may be acting as a sort of poor person's choke despite the lack of a ferrite or amorphous iron core. I created my own with a video camera power supply that had a lot of hum, by winding a spiral of the cord up a ferrite rod til the hum disappeared... There is a proper formulae for creating chokes but they are more for filtering noise than 'protection' but most good surge protectors incorporate chokes - and good mains chokes are wound around a donut-shaped core, rather than a straight one. However, as I indicated , lots of things that shouldn't work, often do. HOWEVER- as for the knot in the cord - has nothing to do with any 'straight path' and is more likely to do harm than good, if it damages the insulation or inner stranded wire, it could overheat and cause a fire, similarly, coiling or knotting a wire also (in ac power-land) causes a 'transformer effect' which will create noise, and potentially heat, therefore again a fire risk. If you have a lot of electrical problems/burnouts, you either have loose neutrals in your house (not uncommon) a poor supply from the poco (rare) or above ground lines in a lightning-prone area. A decent surge protector will help but mostly by preventing your death in a lightning strike - I have provided tech support to many customers who were victims of lightning strikes - a line conditioner is better, and an UPS that provides line conditioning and switchover to backup power when poco power is subpar is ideal, however, they will not necessarily protect equipment downstream in all cases but increase your chance of survivability in a catastrophe. Amongst recognised/respected brands of surge protectors etc the warranty/insurance may be worthwhile (surely keeping/preserving receipts is not rocket surgery) but for the most part I suspect the warranty/insurance is a gamble for the company, for every 10,000 units they sell, they might get one claim. Many household insurance policies protect against electrical damage. Personally, I'd start with a whole-house surge protector. Remember that surge protectors are consumables and need to be replaced periodically, when and if they do absorb a big surge, they may fail completely (but have hopefully saved devices down the line) For those tempted, "Monster Cable" type premium cables/suppressors 'audiophile power cables' do not work. Their benefits are purely subjective. There is no scientific evidence they work. Don't be sucked in http://hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t29989.html I have no doubt Monster cable et als surge protectors etc are nice quality products but I would not pay the premium. Nor would I buy audio cables at the dollar store. Here is a link that might be useful: Choke theory

While it's a little difficult to understand exactly what you mean by eye strain, here's a few tips. Is the display on a wall mount or on it's pedestal? The ideal is for screen to be at eye level when seated. A 55" display in a 15x15 foot might be a little "over-powering" to some people just due to it being the main light source. You may try placing a small lamp near the back or side of the display to see if that helps. There are light kits actually available for this very purpose. It helps with depth of field issues between the display and wall that supposedly cause eye strain. Last the television itself can over-process the video and create problems. You can select several program settings for the video and you may want to click through them to see if one is more pleasing to you. The other thing they do is to dynamically control the display back-lighting based on video content. I highly recommend turning off this feature and reducing the back-light level to a more pleasing level. That's similar to what you were doing by lowering brightness and color levels. Of course there a numerous other adjustments and settings available in the menu as well and may require a little trial and error or outside help from somebody familiar with calibrating video displays.

OK...so i am going to try continue this thread after..umm...4.5 years! From above post: "you can chop some grout out between the bricks and put your wires in there and re-grout with cement over that". I would like to know if this is feasible in my case since it might be the way to go for me. I have 7ft wide and 0.5 ft deep stone wall (rough surface) running from floor all the way to ceiling (high; 14ft or so). It appears there is an inch or two of concrete connecting the stones and the wall behind it. The goal is the same - put a tv on this wall above the fireplace. Doing the wiring by removing one of the stones and running electrical behind the tv is surely the best way, but the labor charges are above what i want to spend. So that brings to the question: Since there is a mantle which leaves only ~3inches of stone exposed (and hence the cable if i run it down behind the tv and behind the mantle) I have only 3inches cable exposed from front view and ~6inches from side view (depth of stone is 6in). Do you think i can remove some of the mortar mix in between the stones, run the extension cord cable + hdmi + cat5 through the groove, put a duct tape and cover it with matching (hopefully) mortar mix? Is it also possible to remove a little bit of that cement (vertically connecting the stones with the wall behind) and do the same concealing patchwork to run the wire down? Let's see if anyone picks my ques

Hi there, DH & I had the same debate... I really didn't want the tv over the FP as I didn't want the tv to be the focal point, but guess who did, LOL. We had concerns with the viewing angle. It's not as comfortable as looking at watching TV at eye level, but it's worked out fine. We still might get it mounted on one of the brackets that can tilt down. (Our room not quite as large as yours) Depending on the style of your fireplace, maybe you could have TV concealed by pocket doors above FP.9Do you have pics of your fireplace?) Another neat idea is having a piece of art that comes down over TV when not in use-operated by remote control. Not sure where you buy...or what this costs, but Candace Olsen uses quite often. A pic of set-up in our room...