Browse Forums Home Theatre & Automation Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 21Jan 22, 2009 10:17 pm What is your estimated cost for Cat 6 to your house?
Shouldn't be all that expensive in my mind. Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 23Jan 23, 2009 7:22 am Hey everyone (sorry, been away again Torquay was nice...).
Stonecutter, is your place single storey? Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 24Jan 23, 2009 6:42 pm you can get a 305m roll of cat 6 for under $150.. which should be more than enough for the average home. Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 25Jan 23, 2009 6:43 pm Rodda Hey everyone (sorry, been away again Torquay was nice...). Stonecutter, is your place single storey? Hey rodda.. you need to get yourself a Telstra Next G mobile broadband connection... so you can still check out homeone whilst your away.. Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 26Jan 23, 2009 7:54 pm amk Telstra Smart Community (The Future) is, ‘Fibre to the Home’ technology for the connection of Telstra services, under agreement with the property developer. This technology is called Telstra Velocity. It is also incredibly expensive and ludicrously underpowered. Woe and sympathy to any poor sod who gets stuck with this latest example of Telstra profiteering. But don;t take my word for it, have a read about it on Whirlpool. Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves. - Dale Carnegie Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 27Jan 23, 2009 8:11 pm Cabinfever It is also incredibly expensive and ludicrously underpowered. Woe and sympathy to any poor sod who gets stuck with this latest example of Telstra profiteering. But don;t take my word for it, have a read about it on Whirlpool. New technology is always more expensive.. but at least Telstra spend the money investing in it.. unlink its competitor who just sit back and then try to lease it off Telstra for ridiculously low amounts... just look at Next G compared to any other mobile broadband network.. 3 years ago the fastest wireless connection you could have outside metro areas was 42kbits.. now you can get speeds in the avg of 3mbits... and peak speeds will soon be 21mbits over Next G in a few weeks!! Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 28Jan 23, 2009 9:42 pm wakeboardandy you can get a 305m roll of cat 6 for under $150.. which should be more than enough for the average home. I think cat6 for home network is overkill. cat6 is more for backbone in a large corporate type network. cat5e is more than enough for a home Gigabit network and more importantly, it is a lot cheaper too. Building Clarendon Brighton - Done and moved in Sept 2009 Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 29Jan 23, 2009 10:29 pm eho wakeboardandy you can get a 305m roll of cat 6 for under $150.. which should be more than enough for the average home. I think cat6 for home network is overkill. cat6 is more for backbone in a large corporate type network. cat5e is more than enough for a home Gigabit network and more importantly, it is a lot cheaper too. how much cheaper are we talking though?? Cat 6 is already super cheap now.. Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 30Jan 24, 2009 5:06 am wakeboardandy eho wakeboardandy you can get a 305m roll of cat 6 for under $150.. which should be more than enough for the average home. I think cat6 for home network is overkill. cat6 is more for backbone in a large corporate type network. cat5e is more than enough for a home Gigabit network and more importantly, it is a lot cheaper too. how much cheaper are we talking though?? Cat 6 is already super cheap now.. I have just rolled out 600m of Cat6 in my house, and from memory I think it was about 42c a metre. Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 31Jan 24, 2009 9:20 am Hey Wakeboard, I have got a 3G card but I left my damned laptop at home by mistake
I actually needed it so I could bid on an eBay item that was ending while we were away. Missed it! Stonecutter:- What I was going to say (and this applies to all) was that if you have a single storey house then most cabling can be done after the place is finished anyway, even if it's not quite as easy, so 'future-proofing' your cabling need not give you that much concern. 2-storey places are obviously a different kettle of fish though... Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 32Jan 26, 2009 3:17 pm hi rodda - yeah - 2 storey is what we're building.
I wonder - if you get cables for internet/tv/whatever put in the roof space - could you then extend that cabling to every room upstairs later on? After 4 years - we're in! Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 33Jan 26, 2009 3:40 pm If you run multiple lengths of whatever cable you want - from a central location I'm guessing - up to the roof space above the 2nd storey and either leave heaps of leftover on each run to allow for it to be brought down inside the walls, or expect it to be joined with whatever the required joiners/connectors are, then that should be fine. Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 34Jan 26, 2009 3:47 pm Hmm don't we all future proof things a little when we build? Most singles or new couples build according to what they think they might need in a house in the next few/5/10 years.
The trouble is when it comes to electronic things a lot can change in 3-5 years. In ways we can't even predict. Consider what you use now, would like to use, , consider how use of floor space in your house might change in 3-5 years and gets some basics down to cover that. anything more seems risky in terms of how fast things change. For me ( more than DH) I have a vision of streemed tv via cable from a single media box. ATM though this won't happen. BUT there's nothing stopping me getting cable in the lounge room to do so at a later point as we've put a conduit in there. maybe even wireless streeming might happen. who knows. . We haven't future proofed our house as such gadget wise. Just set it out according to what we know we will use immediately and what we will also use in the near future when room use will change( within 5 years) Given that our family is complete. ( as much as anyone can plan ) and we know the ages of our kids and have some idea of their use of current technology. etc we were able to do some forward planning. We've identified that to start with computers will be in 3 areas but that one of the areas will change to a different location in 3-5 years. so we've allowed for conduit and cabling there as well. We've decided there will not be tv in any bedroom other than the main one. But that eventually there maybe tv running in 4 areas so have tv points in 3 rooms and a conduit for the 4th ready to go. All of these areas will also have access to conduit for cat5 cabling so tv via this will also be an option. We've paid for 7 conduits in our house. 6 of which will be for cat5e cable. The other one as a future possible additional tv point for free to air tv. Not something we'll use for the first few years but we might want it later down the track when room use changes and given that it's an internal wall the only way to get it organsied was during the build. Between now and when the house is finished it might end up holding cat5e cable anyway. Although we have a wireless phone set I'm also considering running some phone connections via the cat5 cable. We also use voip so this is another option we need to consider in our network arrangement. At this stage we'll use our wireless phones on the voip system and have the wired normal phone in our office as backup. I'm considering replacing our wireless/ethernet modem with one with voip points built in so there is fall back to standard phone. Currently we run 2 wireless comps plus 3 wired. In the new house this is likely to expand to 2 + 4/5 depending on what I set up in the lounge room. Each conduit will have 2 cables. Details more than that are still sketchy. Depends on what happens when the cabler does the quote. Central point will be in the office next to the single original phone point We'll discuss options on how to manage it all when we have our cabler quotes done after handover. I've found 3 cablers willing to quote me so that's something at least given we are not in a city area. . Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 35Feb 17, 2009 9:59 pm I am all for future-proofing as long as its is economically responsible.
Being in the IT industry, I have a compulsion to install the latest and greatest and over-engineer the design, but as you all you when building a house budgets are very important... especially if you want to keep the misses happy I settled on installing Starserve to give me the media distribution capability and ability to modify components (modulator's, switches etc) as technology changed. I opted for CAT-6 instead of CAT-5e as the premium in cabling cost was not that much Since I am building a 2.5 story house (what is that I hear you ask? I have a semi-submersed garage basement) so I decided to run 2x PVC conduits in my subfloor (one to my Starseve the other to my electrical switchboard) and did they same in my ceiling. This should over any cabling I may have missed as well as take advantage of other services such as solar electricity when it becomes cheaper. Have I overdone it? My wife still thinks so! Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 36Feb 18, 2009 9:01 am Ive gotten the OK to network out house.
And CAT6 (2 pair) to most rooms I see as fine. Add more for behind TVs and wherever family computers will end up and your set. Then a switch at a central point and your done. I run a vista media centre, so streaming is done via IP networks, so no starserve or such needed. Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 37Feb 18, 2009 9:58 am Wow, This thread has so much information.
I think each person needs to asses their own individual needs and not say "starserve is a waste of money" based on that it doesn't suit them. That said, will you be the only person to ever own that house. It may suit you now, but for an additional few bucks, you then have a good selling point. Lets look at each aspect of the system. Phone: What phone do you use? most people use cordless. Most cordless phones have multiple handsets but only need one connection. The others are slaves and only require power. Voip will be more popular once they sort out a few technical issues of packet delivery in the broadband system. so that brings me to.... Network. Do you need wired connection or will wireless suffice? Cat5e or Cat6? Both are certified gigabit with the main difference being the bandwidth. Cat6 is more difficult to install properly. What will you actually do with the network? Stream media files? Browse the internet? With most people having copper ADSL installed, the phone system and network are going to be linked no matter what. On to TV. how many Tv's do you want to have? Where will you watch it and what will you be watching? Do you want CCTV? Most people just watch tv and don't really need HD surround sound in every room. Most TV's now have HD tuners built in so as the system just distributes the signal, you'll have the quality there. As "starserve" or similar products offer the end user flexibility, it suits a majority of people. The phone line comes into starserve where a central filter would be installed. This will then be able to connect to alarms, phone sockets and adsl modems easily. The outlets in the rooms can then be whatever you want them to be. phone, data or a fax. simply by plugging in a small patch lead. This is a great network device and may cost extra over having just plates and outlets but also incorporates the TV side as well. The Australian Standards for Structured Cabling, which was intended more for commercial but this falls under their rules, requires a future proof system enabling expansion. This originally stated that every outlet must be a double outlet. With more technology being IP based, this was expanded to triple outlets, Then as Voip became more widely used, the standard pulled back to doubles. If your building a single story brick veneer home, anything can be done at a later date. Full brick and two story really limits your options at a later date. I personally would run at least one cable to each room for phone or data along with a RG6 coax back to a central location (e.g.starserve). (one cat5/cat6 will do just fine as by the time kids want a phone, they'll have a mobile ,cordless handset or use Voip. or do you even want them with their own phone in their bedroom?) That gives you flexibility to use what is current and future technology. But as I said, this system needs to be looked at carefully as to whether it suits your needs and budget. Licenced Sparky and Data Cabler If "The Data Guys" is too long to type, TDG will do. Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 38Feb 18, 2009 10:44 am The Data Guys Phone: What phone do you use? most people use cordless. Most cordless phones have multiple handsets but only need one connection. The others are slaves and only require power. Question - if you want to order anything "on demand' from Foxtel - don't you need a phone line connected? So theoretically, next to each Pay TV point you should have phone point (what I was advised by my builder's sparky) Edit - typo - I meant phone point next to the paytv outlet After 4 years - we're in! Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 39Feb 18, 2009 11:03 am stonecutter1309 Question - if you want to order anything "on demand' from Foxtel - don't you need a phone line connected? So theoretically, next to each Pay TV point you should have TV point (what I was advised by my builder's sparky) Pay Per view stuff needs a phone (not TV) connection to the foxtel box, so yes you need a phone line near pay TV points I would say. Not sure of multi-box setups for what is needed. Re: Is "future proofing" a waste of money? 40Feb 18, 2009 11:07 am I don't have Foxtel so I'm not up to date on what they require for all installs.
I would think you would have Foxtel in your HT and family rooms. I would put an extra RG6 (coax) to each location where you may want foxtel. With Starserve, the foxtel signal goes to the foxtel box and from there you can pump the decoded signal back (via coax) into the system so it can be viewed on any tv. This means the single RG6 to each room carries FTA and foxtel. BUT it will be the channel decided at the foxtel box. If you want to watch different channels, then you need separate boxes and therefore a separate foxtel cable to that location. e.g. Home theatre has all the usual goodies including foxtel and you want the family room to have a separate foxtel box. Then the family room will need 2 RG6 cables. One for foxtel and one for FTA. Now I have heard of specs that require 2 Coax's per foxtel box. I thought it was for satellite dish services but I could be wrong. I'm sure someone here has the answer to that. I have only had to install second coax's for customers that had satellite services. (foxtel installers are scared of tight spaces, roofs, heights and work in general) I thought they did require a phone line to the Foxtel box for on demand ordering? I have installed phone lines purely for this purpose Licenced Sparky and Data Cabler If "The Data Guys" is too long to type, TDG will do. Scientists have used random matrix theory to demonstrate theoretically that the neutrino mass hierarchy can be explained mathematically. When a substance is fragmented… 21 20651 thanks Chippy, i hope they have applied sealer but i am doubt to be honest, so i am gonna do this job after handover. 8 16284 Brass fly wire, you will need to cut it, shape it and jam it into brick slots 1 7475 |