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Just Moved Into My New House and Have Cable and Wiring Problems Need Serious Help!

#1
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Hi Guys:

I just recently moved into my new house. However I am having a serious problem with my televisions. All my televisions in my house were wall mounted. Long story short during the construction of the house, my contractor and his electrician had a falling out and now I am the one that is suffering. Anyway, I was under the impression, that I was going to get this unit that goes in the basement that controls all the cable boxes... However I did not get this unit. I do not know what it is even called, or if it even exist or even if I have the wiring for it. They claim that the wiring is installed I just need to buy this box.

I have about 5 televisions mounted already and a few that still need to be mounted. All of which will need to be connected to cable boxes. However my main problem is all the wires that are hanging, i.e the cable box wires, component cables etc. It just really looks horrible. I only hooked up two of my tv's so far with the cable boxes at this point, as it looks terrible. It kinda defeats the whole purpose of having the televisions mounted. I do not know what to do at this point. If I knew it was going to turn out like this no way would I have had them mounted. 

If anybody on here has any suggestions on what I can do to eliminate all these cable box wires I would really appreciate it. Also if you would know the name of the box that I was suppose to get. Or if you know someone in the NYC area that specializes in these types of setups. I just wanted a clean look, like you see everywhere that has the flat panel tv's mounted, you never see any wires. That is what I thought I was going to get. But instead got the exact opposite. Again any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.


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#2
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We don't know what you need because we don't know what you have.  Did the contractor run a single coax cable to each TV location?  Did you originally plan to have the cable boxes in a single location and feed the TV's from there?  Did you want a high def signal at each TV?  What about DVD and other sources?  Are these TV's all on the floor above your basement?  Or do you have a 2nd floor with TV's as well?

As someone who has gone through the experience of building a house, you should have never moved in without everything 100% to your satisfaction.  My house was properly wired to my specs when I moved in since I did the wiring.  In the last couple of years things have changed and I need to run more cables.  Unless you have money to burn, you will need to learn how to run both low and high voltage wires in your walls as well as gather a few basic tools.  Hopefully Wayne will stop by with his 'how to' on running cables.

-Robert

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#3
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Thanks for responding. I know that each television has its own single coax cable for each TV location. From what I understood all the cable boxes would be placed in the basement and that all the televisions would have cable through the remote control (inferred eye?). I honestly have no clue what this was. All I know is that I thought all the cableboxes would be in my basement in like this central station, and all my televisions would have their own cable. Meaning that I can watch what I want in my room and my family members in other rooms can watch what they want. I have a 3 floor house. All electric is brand new. All the televisions are new and have HD. Three of them have already been mounted to the walls. The other locations have the single coax cable in locations for the televisions to be mounted. The two tv's that I hooked up with the cable boxes have the all the wires hanging and looks awful. It defeats the whole purpose of mounting them.

I hope this clears my situation up a little bit better then before. Does such a device even exist that would allow me to have no cablebox wires hanging from each tv? If so what is it called? And also how would I be able to tell if this is the way it was properly wired for this device? Between my contractor, electrician, I do not know the full story what happened and what exactly the electrician did or didn't do. Really any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again
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#4
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Hey Dan,

Right off the bat, if all that is run to the TVs are a single coax line than the TVs that are HD will not receive HD signal.  Most cable boxes only supply HD from component video cable (red, green, and blue RCA style) or a single HDMI cable.  It almost wouldn't be feasible to run HDMI from the basement to the third floor, the cost of the cable for HD would be insane as they are very expensive especially depending on length.

With that said, if you didn't care that you weren't getting HD sent to all your TVs you could invest in a remote control that uses RF.  Ideally would you want seperate remotes in each room, or a master remote for all rooms?  Practically I think it'd be best to have seperate remotes in each room.  I'd then only worry about interference, if you have all the same cable boxes and same remotes what would stop your remote from changing the channel on another tv?  This would need some research.

The best thing to do would be look up an installation specialist in your area and stop by and get some ideas on types of distribution control equipment or what soultions they might offer.  Unfortunatly I'm not up to date on all the latest and greatest whole house control devices.  But they are out there; crestron, runco, control 4.  Maybe looking on these websites may help with simple all in one solutions.  They may even make devices that can convert your High definition outputs from the cable boxes (component, HDMI) to CAT5 or coax for running through the walls and then back to HDMI or component so you can hook these up to your tv.

Hope this can help get you started on your way and asking some of the right questions if you contact a professional installer.
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