I have to side with Pugs - the advantage of structured cabling is that it can carry much more than just Ethernet - component video or HDMI over cat 6 or future standards like HDBaseT or even IR distribution. Also sub switches are a bit messy.

I have put 4 points at each TV location - an extra $30 now may save me from pain in the future.

Paul

The thing is that it is not $30 more to do it tends to cost a lot more, if it is $75 per run and you are running 4 to each TV point then you are looking at $300 per point. The OP has said that they are only doing it for future sale and all the reasons you have said they need to run extra cable can still be done over 1 or 2 runs.

What the OP intends to use it for should be taken into account otherwise they will look back in a couple of years and think what a waste.

I hate the term future proofing as many people use this reason to get loads of extra cables, technology changes too fast and people who put in cat5 cable 8 years thinking they where future proofing now has old technology.

What the OP intends to use it for should be taken into account otherwise they will look back in a couple of years and think what a waste.

I hate the term future proofing as many people use this reason to get loads of extra cables, technology changes too fast and people who put in cat5 cable 8 years thinking they where future proofing now has old technology.[/quote]


HI all, and thanks for all the help, suggestions and feedback. I do think "where will it all end"...we are going to do what we are happy with including runs of cat 6 , abus, tv coax, figure 8 and 4 core etc for security and cameras and leave it at that...we dont have any children, but will still run tv, abus and cat 6 to all the other bedrooms, as that will help sell in the future. everything else we will run will be for us and what we want, which to a degree is the same for many people. as you say - what is "future proofing" now - could be old technology in the future...so....

I was looking for such an exact topic to find answers!

The Cat 6 and 5 are the data cables i suppose? and the 6 cable is able to transfer at higher rates?

What i am thinking is about the 4 cables you said.
One let's say is for internet (although wifi can do the job nowadays)
Second is for tv
What about the other ones?

Currently i have a computer which my TV is connected on it. I thought initially connecting all rooms to that computer.
However wouldn't it be cheaper to just get a cheap laptop and watch movies in each room, rather that wiring another Cat6 and an HDMI cable? And then through a home network we can transfer files to the computers...
I am not into much details for wires etc, so excuse me is some of my questions seem dumb to some people!

One for tv one for internet and one for phone for a start.


We did mostly runs of 2. I'm anti tv's and cabled net access in minor bedrooms so none in there. Our eldest will have a personal notebook supplied by school for his final year and I will have to decide if we'll allow him net access wirelessly when that comes. We cabled the kids play room however , put 5 runs in our games but have a spare conduit for further runs in there as well. Our bedroom has 2 sets of two and the lounge has 2 as well. Everything in our place ends in the office where there is a 24 port switch. Voip base, wired and wireless printers and computers. I do think I might later on regret not insisting on cat 6, we put in cat 5e but since all our cables are in conduit we can always pay to have it re run if we need to later on.

hope you dont mind a few questions....out of interest, what you use 4 data points for in the main bedroom? and with cordless phones do people really need so mant phone points? what would you use a datapoint behind the fridge for? do security cameras and intercoms need special cabling or does cat 6 do the job?

thanks

TV related stuff.. it is guide only so you really need to talk to a data guy near you to do a quote or at least get your head around what you may need

these arn't phone points these are Non specific comms points.

newer IP cameras run off Cat6. Intercomms do need their own specific cabling

as Pugs said, everyone is different. what do you want to be able to do? what do you know you can do? What have you not even considered doing because you don't know it's possible?

1. We have a wired phone point using data cable for a phone in our bedroom and also a hands free voip phone in the bedroom because i've been too slack to set it up to switch between both options.( yes 2 phones)
2.We also have a wired point which mostly doesn't get used but is currently set up as a internet/network cable. Sometimes the wireless isn't the best signal to our bedroom so having a physical cable is handy. Usually depends on what wireless machine I'm using.
3. I wish we'd put another data cable in next to the tv position. DH couldn't see the use/value sadly. We have a wdtv box in the lounge room and I would love to have another point in the bedroom to connect the bedroom tv to the network as well. I rarely watch fta tv live preferring to watch stuff stored on my network and would love to be able to do so in the bedroom on the tv instead of always at my comp or in the lounge. Yes I can watch it using a laptop but it's not the same. This might seem an indulgence but I've previously had 6 months of being mostly bedridden and having additional viewing options is always good. ( will have some more "down" time again in the next couple of years although thankfully not for as long.

thanks guys. certainly see that there are many uses and that peoples needs are all different.

kexkez: we are similar in we watch alot of content from network so we definitely want this delivered to all the TV's in the house.
Pugs: we are now talking to some people to get quotes for this as well as other home automation objectives.
cheers.

my new house got wired with a central place for phone/internet. From there are cat5 going to the rooms I have a tv in. The problem I now have is that in some of the tv locations I have multiple devices requiring internet connection but only one cat5 connections.....wish I had looked into this a bit more rather than relying on the electrician

Caveat to the following – I intend on staying in the house I'm building for the rest of my life. For this reason, I have not spared any expense so feel free to pick and choose what you want and ask whatever questions you like for my reasoning

The way I looked at is you need to bring it back to your core requirement. Work out what you HAVE or WANT TO HAVE in say the next 5-10 years and work to that
This is what I figured for my place – I broke it down to what I have / expect to use down the line for say the theatre room;

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Add an extra 2 power points for plugin additional hardware and 2 additional data points for expansion. Also, make sure you cable you speakers for at least 5.1. I'm going 7.2 because I have the setup already. The last thing I want is to have ugly speaker cabling running all around the room and I do not subscribe to wireless speakers

Then for each Bedroom, I put 2 x Data point (As I can run it myself, it is the cost of the cable is the only real extra – the price between a single or double gang is nominal) AND a TV (RG6) point. This can be used for; free2air TV, Foxtel or intercom (depending on system)

In the Kitchen, put POWER EVERYWHERE!! When the Mrs is in there and the kids want to help out, in our current place there is not enough power for appliances, laptop with recipe (that is about to die!) and phone chargers (which always seem to HAVE to be in the kitchen as annoying as they can be). Also, double data points on opposite sides of the kitchen. There is some funky intercom/security devices which are Cat5/6 enabled that you will be able to utilise down the track.

Garage – depending on size, anywhere between 3-4 double points in each corner of the garage. When you have family gatherings in the middle of summer with a garage full of people, the point for the pedestal fan you just lugged from upstairs will be in the wrong spot – trust me! Also (I have to thank my electrician for this one) – PUT ONE IN THE METRE BOX!! It makes sense for when your blowing down the driveway, wiper-snipper, etc

Next – Laundry. 2 x double power points (Dryer, Washer, second fridge, 1 spare)

Rumpus – Make sure you have 2-3 Double points littered around the room. You don’t know where your cabinets are going to go and the last thing you want is to put extension cords all around the room

Entrance – 1 Cat6, depending on the sort of intercom you go for. I would also run an RG6 instead, again depending on model of choice

Bathrooms – AT LEAST 1 double power – if not 2 if it makes sense (and you have 2 young daughters and can pre-empt the ‘Mirror Time’. Some people like to the audio in the bathroom, depending on how long you plan to spend in there. In which case, I would look at running additional data for maybe a Sonos unit or even look at making space for a wall-mounted tablet that is connected to your network. There is A LOT of things you can do in this space

Aircon – People forget now days that a lot of the units allow for network connectivity. This will allow such functionality as temperature monitoring remotely to turning on the aircon from outside the home

CCTV – depending if you want RG6/Cat5-6/WiFi, you will need to make a decision as to what type you want. I personally feel Cat6 will best cater to future technologies AND allow POE (Power Over Ethernet) connectivity

Outdoor – run at least 2 speakers cables back to an amp that allows for multiple zones AND you have line of sight to the AMP, otherwise there are IR extenders on the market that will allow you to control the sound from outside without having to walk back in every time you want to turn volume up or down, mute, etc Also consider if you want to mount a TV outside – If you answer yes to this, same rules apply as the Theatre room. You may want to install a TV with a PC mounted behind it to run an instance of Media Centre (I'm personally an XBMC convert and intent on having an instance with each screen)

Most importantly – a LAN Cabinet. This essentially becomes the brains of the house. In this, I have accommodated for the following;
1. Comms patching – Cat 6
2. TV Patching – All TV points come back to the rack. This allows you to change in the future as to what is running over each run. Line boosters may be required. Roof Mounted Aerial will run to this cabinet and split to each room
3. Network Switch (12/24 port Gig Switch). If available, aim for a POE enabled model
4. NAS – Network-Attached Storage. ALL my data (movies, TV shows, Family photos, music, applications, CCTV video, etc is stored here. This allows for any device that I allow on the network to have access to this information without the need to copy onto a USB stick or be restricted to only 1 device for consuming information. Each NAS will require 1 PWR, 1 DATA and PLENTY of ventilation
5. PC – depending on how technical you are. For me, I have a PC here running everything from backup scripts, to firewalls allowing external access to general monitoring of household devices
6. NOTE – ensure there is plenty of ventaliation AND/OR cooling. The more gear, the cooler it needs to be otherwise you will have an expensive repair bill each summer. Consider even a duct if you go for under the stairs

You would also install your distributed media devices here also for things such as multi room audio, video on demand (HD Homerun for example), etc

Sorry for the long reply and again, open to any questions

aka a Comms Cabinet/ Rack, maybe please stick to well known names for objects


Just saying...

Hi JMAP great list had a couple of questions.

I'm still very much a novice when it comes to this stuff so excuse any dump questions, building a new home in the next year or so and currently doing some research.

Like you am a fan of XBMC, when you say "run an instance of Media Centre" do you mean at each TV you will have a small HTPC running with a network cable running back to the NAS to pick up the movie/music files etc? In my current house I recently wanted to watch movies stored on the NAS (which is in the study) in the bedroom, so I ran a network cable through the roof to a small HTPC that I built a little shelf for (TV installed high on the bedroom wall), managed to get an old Xbox remote to work with it, HTPC boots into XBMC and it works quite well. Just was wondering if there was an easier way? Can the computer be located in the LAN cabinet and supply multiple TVs running XBMC?

"TV patching all TV points come back to the rack" wasn't sure what you meant by this?

We are getting close to finalising the floor plan on new place and will have to have a good think about where things go and this sort of setup.

jasper12 - glad to help if I can (others - apologises for the acronyms)

XBMC instance - yes, I mean to have a HTPC to each TV. This ensures everyone in the house can watch what they want, when they want, as loud as they want, etc. No need for shelving either - look into the Asus eeePC - HDMI (v1.3 - fine for a single screen) output, 1Litre in physical size, Gig LAN port and included is a vesa mount - all for less then $400 / PC. XBMC lite install costs $0. I have had a lot of success with these for myself and family. All my data is stored on a couple of NAS's I have on my network. All you need to do is configure each HTPC to see the same shares (connected via SMB in XBMC) and you are off and running. I looking at having 3-4 of these set up around the house and a 5th in the Comms rack which i can use for playing the content to the whole house via splitters and extenders (more for Audio than video)

You can try to be smart and use 1 PC to multiple TV's but this requires extensions to HDMI cabling (which I would advise against long runs unless you have more money to throw at this) OR HDMI extenders (Convert HDMI to Ethernet - 1 unit at the PC and then another at the TV end).....Too many things that can go wrong that for the sake of $400, you get a dedicated HTPC. If you are energy conscious, swap the Hard drive out for a solid-state drive. then you essentially have no moving parts in the box.

Remote - I use my phone. (Im only talking about XBMC specifically) Connect the HTPC to your LAN and your phone to your Wi-Fi and configure the app (Android - official xbmc remote of Apple - there is a number of remotes available) and you can just use your phone. Has not missed a beat yet

"TV patching all TV points come back to the rack" - all the RG6 (Antenna Cable) from the points around the house will terminate to the comm rack. From here, all the points are split off the Antenna on the roof. The benefit of this is that I can turn any of those points into a Foxtel line down the track by simply installing the Foxtel feed from the road to the comms rack. unplug the free to air feed to say the lounge and plug into the Foxtel feed. No need to rip the cable out of the wall

Arhh yes understand, thanks for the info, great stuff. Have XBMC running on a little Windows 7 machine will have to look into the Lite/Live version to save some $$.

Getting some plans finalised over the coming months, will post them up to see if I can get an idea where to put Power points /cables / Comm rack etc" for best setup, the budget is tight.

There are lots of good products out there nowadays that would prohibit the need to have any more than 1 HTPC with large capacity for a house and still retain all the flexibly of being able to stream different video content to multiple TVs simultaneously. Position your HTPC at one TV and use boxes such as WDlive etc ($125). which come with their own remotes to connect to the HTPC and stream video content across the network. You can also buy a DLNA certified TV, run a DLNA server on your HTPC and you are streaming video straight out of the box only by plugging in an Ethernet cable to the TV connected to your home network. We have done this for a 32 incher and it works a treat.

Sierra - great call on the DLNA. You are right with the ability of DLNA. I have tried to use it but when trying to watch full HD over the network it just buffered and flaked out. I wasnt willing to put up with it as a lot of my content is in HD

WD live boxes are the only box I would swap to if I needed to. The reasons why I stayed with xbmc is the live TV and Z-Wave integration that the WD boxes dont allow. But for bang for your buck to watch HD content over your network - WD live is the best

Why? Just use a media streamer such as the Boxee, Apple TV, Dune or Popcorn hour, all of which can stream many different formats, and just have a single recorder (if that's what you want) as well as a server with huge storage (can be the HTPC recorder if you want).

Much lower power consumption, simpler interface (from personal experience, most people just want to watch, and adding complications with a full HTPC interface means lots of support required).

depending on your hardware you can use a linx version of XBMC that will be the "OS" and just load up

Boxee, ATV Dune and othr don't support alot of other options...

tho a Rasberry Pi small form factor PC will load up XBMC half the size of any of these (shame the world wide demand has outstripped thier supply for awhile) but once they get production in full swing + cases they will be selling like hot cakes.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

for me my HTPC is about lookinfg good and working good...

these are my HTPC specs:
MB: GA 350N-USB3
CPU/GPU: E-350/ HD6310
Ram: 4GB Kingston DDR3
OS: Windows XP Pro
HD 1: WD SATA II 640GB
Optical: Pioneer SATA
Case/ PSU: Antec Fusion Black/ 450W earth watts

some pics

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[ img ]

this a Noontec A6 we have in the bedroom:

[ img ]

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As Pugs has called out, it does come down to what functionality you are after. Personally, I want to be able to more than just launch a movie or TV show. XBMC is the best fit for me and by having all my data centrally, each instance of xbmc IS a media streamer with no data locally stored.

Power consumption - as stated previously, you stick a SSD (Solid state Drive) into one of these Asus boxes and you have a fairly low consumption rate

Rasberry Pi = SOOOOO much potential with this unit when it comes out...so many applications other than just media streamer as well. very excited