Clifford Manuel

Wall Jacks or No Wall Jacks

I am currently in the process of having our basement finished with a dedicated HT room. One of the many questions that I have been pondering is "wall jacks or no wall jacks".

I know that wall jacks help to clean up installs and leaves some leeway for moving equipment in the future. However, do I need to be concerned about signal loss and/or degradation?

Also, I want to do it for both video and audio. Any concerns with one or the other or both?

There are some pricey solutions out there that would work. Anyone want to share what they have done? Any feedback would be great.

BrentN

what i did... lol... ran wires under things and over door frames.. it ain't pretty but they're out of the way.

Brian Corr

It's always better to minimize breaks in the cable.
I used the Leviton plates (sold at home depot) that are modular and accept the different types of connectors. Except I didn't use the connectors. I just used the plates and ran the cables straight through the holes in the plate. They come with 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8 holes if I remember correct.
Looks pretty clean (mostly hidden by my equipment anyway) and you can always swap the plate out with a blank or add connectors to the plate if you decide to in the future.

JustinG

I like the plates I used. Built them from parts on partsexpress and saved money. Also, they look great and give it a clean look.

I'd say, if you are finishing out the room, run the wire in-wall and at least do plates for your surrounds and sub. Also, think about wiring for the future, like 7.1. Would be hard to run new wires after sheetrock is up. I had mine done for 7.1 but currently only use 2 surrounds for 5.1. I will be upgrading in the future to 7.1 though and it'll take 5 minutes to mount and hook up the new speakers.

Torgny Nilsson

I am in the process of installing plates for 7.1, although I am also currently only planning to use 5.1. I like the clean look of the plates, the flexibility, and from what I have heard, the sound is the same. I got my plates from Smarthome.com.

Clifford Manuel

JustinG,

I browsed the wall plates at partsexpress and found some plates and connectors that would work great in my situation. I found one of your postings in another thread where you listed some part numbers from partsexpress.


I think that I'm pretty set on the speaker wall plates and for the sub, but I would like to do video still. I would like to have a plate in the ceiling for the front projector that I'm planning to get. I just don't know about how much I will be sacrificing the video signal, or even if it's an issue.

I was thinking a RCA to F (parts express 091-1200) connector on the plate so that the in wall cable will terminate to the plate through a F connector and out side of the wall to the equipment will be an RCA connector. I plan on 4 runs of coax from the equipment rack to the projector mount (3 for component and 1 for composite).

Is going this route for the video a mistake? Thanks for the feedback.

JustinG

Sorry clifford, I have no firect experience with the video part. Depends on the projector's hookups and the receiver you have. I'm assuming the projector would have RCA, S-Video and Component video.

If your receiver can take any signal and do component upconversion, then you only need a component cable that will go from your receiver to the projector. The same for the other 2 cable types if you don't have component video onthe receiver.

But, for the video cable, I think it might be easier just to run the cable up through a wall plate instead of terminating in a plate and coming out the other side. It just all depends on how you have the projector mounted.