Hi aduncan Thank you checking with me! I had a deadline for yesterday and didn't cehck the boards. I haven't signed up for notifciations too. I happened to check the boards and saw this in the first few pages. The information which you guys gave me was very useful. The installer also suggested the same thing and a IR repeater/finder so that we could use a remote in front of the TV while the setup will be hidden on the other side of the TV in the office room. We don't have a closet close by and he gave this suggestion which I liked. He suggested to add ethernet jacks in a couple of places in the house and gave me suggestions for a speaker bar to be placed on top of the TV. He said that it will be thin so I don't have to worry about the looks. He suggested using a sling box to view the video content from the DVR. But that could be used for viewing the content only on a computer not on a tv. I could go to the route of satellite connection with multiple DVRs for that. All in all, it was a great meeting. He hasn't given me the quotes yet though! I can decide what I want then.

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

Emmachas, Always save things to two places and for important things three or more. Hard drive. Disc. Online hosting service. Email. And some websites will allow you to 'save' things in your profile so you can easily reference things without having to mine your hard drive. Just look in the upper right hand corner of your post and click on the appropriate action; clip this post, email this post.

I ran 120 outlet and next to it a good size conduit for everything else. And that is what I recommend if you are keeping entertainment devices in an alcove near the TV or within 15'. We had composite, component and one HDMI going through the conduit, but when our new TV came with three hdmi we switched cables in the conduit. If you place connector plates for HDMI, you may as well place three, and that is expensive, can introduce problems signal degradation (yes even digital signals can have problems from too many connections, and HDMI is famously hinky sometimes) We have cat5e from our home server and network distro going to our alcove next to our fireplace where a switch then distributes to WDTV Live, wii, and xbox. they variously feed audio to our receiver and a/v to the TV. we also have wires coming though the conduit to the TV for wii bar, center speaker, and RG6. there is also optical from the TV to the receiver to move 5.1 for live TV. For example if i was installing plates, a couple of years ago I would have needed composite to feed video camera and now I do that DNLA from my phone to my home network to the WDTV to watch videos I shot from my phone on the TV. Without a conduit we would be saddled with regularly changing needs and permanent obsolete hookups. Conduit for non 120 applications is code, and gives you flexibility. Just make sure it is wicked wide (ours is 3" diameter) so you have no trouble fishing cable heads through. It will be behind the TV and no one will ever see it, if you or future owner want to remove the end and cover it with a drywall patch a 3" hole is pretty manageable. I echo the thoughts against expensive cables, they are mostly overpriced and almost never better. I use monoprice.com