Something Different - A Cabling Question (1 Viewer)

[Richard E Jones]

Firstly, my apologies for this being a long post.

I have a number of questions about cabling. I pre-wired my new house at the time of construction and used a firm of "specialists" to specify and then install the various cabling systems. In summary I installed;

A RG6 network for modulating video signals to general purpose TV outlets around the house and for a camera at the front door.

Multi-pair appliance cabling (shielded I think) to key locations for IR receivers for control purposes.

Cat 5 outlets for data and voice.

Speaker cable (lower grade) for in ceiling speakers and outdoor speakers.

Speaker cable (higher grade) for a HT which is a dedicated room of about 12' x 12'.

In the HT room I also asked them to pre-wire for a wall mounted plasma and a ceiling mounted projector. At the time I didn't know what was needed - so I just let them go for it.

All this cable comes back to the "control room" - actually its my study - which is adjacent to the HT. There is so much cabling in this room it scares my wife. Actually, it scared me the first time I saw it.

As far as equipment goes, I don't have much at this stage;

Yamaha RX-V730 (brand new)
ROTEL RB-870 & RC-870 (quite old but still work well)
NEOTECH "AUTOFORMER" for speaker control (volume / AMP switching)
PC being used as an mp3 server and connected to the RC-870.
The PC has a Geforce 256 which I think has both a DVI and S-Video connector.

OK, now for the questions;

I think I will go FP for video. What I would like to know is the best way to connect it to both my PC and RX-V730. The unterminated cables I can use are 3xRG59, 1xRG6, 1xCat5, 1xAWM 2835 4 pair shielded (I think). I don't know why they did the Cat 5 & AWM - could these be used for a DVI or S-Video connection from my PC? Would I need a "black box" between the PC and Projector or will it hook straight up to the PC. Should I try and concentrate all video sources in the study and then send to the projector via one cable method or use multiple physical connections?

Second question - and please keep the laughing down. I did a dumb thing and didn't deliberately allow for a sub-woofer outlet in the HT - duh! I thought it would use speaker cable - so I asked for just speaker cable at the location I wanted the sub. However, thanks to the brilliance of this forum I have figured out that I could use one of the RG59 hidden in the wall for the plasma (which I won't be needing now). Is this correct? Can I get the RG59 terminated onto a RCA wall plate and then use it for the sub - please say yes - otherwise I'm going to have to cut a hole in the wall and my wife will go nuts.

Third question - another duh! The cablers ran a Cat 5 cable with every RG6 - so this means at every TV outlet I have an unterminated Cat 5 hidden in the wall. I know I should have been paying more attention to these guys - but I don't know what these would be used for?

If you got this far - thanks for reading, any ideas would be gratefully received.

Incidently the cabling above including most terminations cost about $6,000 Aussie at the build time (including the TV antenna) - this is about $4,000 US I think. Was this a reasonable budget?

Cheers
Richard

 

[Neil Joseph]

Is this correct? Can I get the RG59 terminated onto a RCA wall plate and then use it for the sub - please say yes

Oui!

I have been doing that in my last two home theatres.

 

[Derek Iverson]

Incidently the cabling above including most terminations cost about $6,000 Aussie at the build time (including the TV antenna) - this is about $4,000 US I think. Was this a reasonable budget?

Hmm... Sounds reasonable. I would have done it myself though. You could have saved a lot of money.

 

[Richard E Jones]

lol Derek - yes I do realise that mate, but my cat 5 for data is at other locations - not next to the TV RG6 terminations where these are located. As far as doing the work myself, I probably could have but it isn't a core competency and so I outsourced it.

I did a bit of research and came up with this box

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/P...o_adapter.html

In theory if I can't get the DVI or S-video via any of the cables I mentioned, I should be able to use one of these to generate a component connection. Then I hope I could connect the component outs to one of the RX-730's component in's with the DVD on the other input. Then I should be able to switch video sources at the receiver and just have one connection to the projector.

Has anyone seen / used one of these before. Are there any obvious issues with it? For $130 it looks like reasonable value to me.

Cheers
Richard

 

[Derek Iverson]

Sounds like a good plan, but if you're going to convert VGA to component, I'd recommend you use a real transcoder such as the Key Digital KD-VTCA2 or the Audio Authority 9A60. They will allow you to output HDTV resolutions (4:3 & 16:9).

Digital Connection also has a FAQ article to look at. It is very informative.

 

[Chad Anson]

I've seen products that let you run SVGA and s-video over cat 5. Do a search for "SVGA balun" and "svideo balun" and see what you come up with. These are fairly pricy.

You can also run s-video over 2 rg-6 (or maybe rg-59's) using an adapater at both ends. These are less expensive than the above option.