Hi, First things first, not every flat panel TV needs to be wall mounted, most people put them way too high and they all come with a base that you must remove first. If you have a desired location and know where you want your equipment then what you want to do is create a passage-way from the TV down to the equipment through the wall. Use the low-voltage old-work boxes and dress them up with hooded face plates. Then you can run whatever cables you may need/desire for the equipment you add. Std. DVD, with upconversion or BluRay can carry everything via HDMI. You want all cables to be "in wall rated" which is for fire safety purposes most of all. If you have other equipment that requires either RF, composite, S-Video, Component, RGB, or HDMI you have the feed-through in the wall cavity already in place. The AC power however is separate and must have an outlet behind the TV fed via proper electrical installation techniques. Keep the Romex and signal cables as far apart as possible and avoid parallel runs beyond 2-3 feet.

Depending on the building construction you may not have studs. Plaster can be placed directly on a masonry wall. If the wall is an interior wall it is likely a stud wall with plaster. The baseboard nail locations are not a good indicator of studs in most plaster work. To create a level wall plaster Âgrounds are used around all openings and edges were plaster ends. These are typically 1 inch thick wood strips. At the baseboard they are often 2-3 inches wide (at windows 1-2 inches is common). The baseboard is attached to the plaster grounds and not directly to the studs. If the walls are smooth plaster repairs are pretty easy, so you can use a small (1/8 inch) masonry bit to go looking for the studs. The studs are typically on 16 inch centers in older work. Measure from the nearest corner and drill a test hole. For a heavy load you need to have the exact center of the stud, so count on drilling a few holes. If the mounting bracket is large enough, it will cover at least some of the errant holes. To mount into the studs you need to remember the plaster is at least ¾ of an inch thick and get screws with enough length to get well into the stud. If you are on a common wall it may be masonry and mounting gets a lot more complicated. A unit that hangs away from the wall produces a large tension (withdrawal load) on the fasteners and many masonry fasteners do not have good tension load characteristics. Drop in expanding steel anchors have good tension, but are larger and more difficult to install correctly. The strength is also very dependent on the exact material the anchor is driven into.

ROFL...love the reference to hubby's girlfriend! We built this house so we had the electrician put in the "tube" as he called it for the wires behind the wall. They just come out from the set and feed down the wall inside the tube to the outlet behind the dresser. The components were a sore spot for us as we struggled with what kind of dresser to buy and if we could somehow hide them but we ended up loving this RH dresser and just put them on stop. It doesn't look too awful although I would have prefered them hidden. I'll see if I can find any construction photos of the tube or wires behind....I don't know if I took any of them? Lindy

Go to the Monoprice website. They have a huge selection of wall mounts (huge!). And they are cheap. I have 2 and they have worked for years. And for my TVs (32" and 42"), they were less than $20 each (articulated arms to swivel and extend, and limited tilt, no height adjustment). One of them is futzed with daily because it's used as both a TV and a computer monitor. Rock solid.