Passing cables between TV and other equipment

[Jupiter01]

Hi,

I am planning a wall hung TV and at ground level I then have a unit which will house the decoder, DVD player, etc.

There is around 1 metre between the TV and where this unit will be. I am preparing the walls for plastering and would like to know, how I should pass through HDMI cables and have the access to pass any additional cables in the future.

 

[Lucid]

Subject to the construction of the wall; bury a piece of trunking in the wall. Finish it top and bottom with brush plates. If you want to be thorough then add a draw string for use in pulling additional/different cables in the future.

Additional tip: Run power cables in a separate piece of trunking and leave a minimum 9" gap between the two parallel runs. This will help avoid any mains-bourn interference affecting the AV signals.

 

[Jupiter01]

Where do I buy this stuff from

 

[Lucid]

Any of the bigger DIY stores, Screwfix, electrical wholesalers etc

 

[Jupiter01]

I am trying to gauge the size of the wider trunking in your picture and is that definitely suitable to bury into plasterboard and plaster?

 

[Lucid]

There's this search engine thing called Google. If you type stuff in to the text space and press enter then it'll give you lots of hits on a particular topic. Type in "trunking". The result can be displayed in various ways. These are selected from the options at the top of the results page. The options include "All" (which should be pretty-much self-explanatory) and "Images" (again not too difficult to understand the meaning there). Choose Images and you should be able to work out after scrolling a few pages that trunking comes in different sizes and profiles; some are more square, others are rectangular. The rectangular options include those with a flatter wider profile.

Now here's the really cool part: If you click on a picture of something you see that you want to know more about then Google will link to the website where that image has come from! I know, it's insane!!! Who thinks of these things? From the comfort of your armchair (or wherever you use the device that accesses the web you can actually find information about stuff.... and all on your own initiative. Wow!!! Amazeballs, in'it !!! Some of that information includes stuff that tells you the size of things. Mind.... blown!!

But wait, it gets even better. If you have a measuring device called a ruler or a tape measure then you can take the information about the size of things and see what that looks like first-hand. This is made possible because a few hundred years ago some sciency-type blokes thought it might be a good idea to have a set of standardised units of measurement. The result is truly remarkable: If I were to see something with dimensions given in say centimetres or inches then I could take my measuring device and relate that bit of data to something physical.

Now before we get too carried-away with the world of science and the internet and the information it carries I'm afraid I'm going to have to bring you back down to earth with a bit of a bump. Not everything can be handed to you on a plate. Occasionally you have to think about stuff yourself. Sorry, but them's the breaks. In the case of this discussion amd your installation then you might actually have to make some judgements and choices about the depth of the wall space you have to play with and what size of trunking would be the minimum acceptable to pull a HDMI cable or similar through if there's already some cables in the trunking.

As for whether trunking is suitable for burying in walls, you've come on-line and found a technical forum with the express idea of asking advice before you go ahead with a job in your home. Wouldn't it then be reasonable to presume that those who give of their own free time to help a stranger and provide peer-reviewed answers in such a forum do so from a position of experience and knowledge? I mean otherwise what's the point in finding the forum and engaging in a discussion in the first place if you're then to discount the validity of the responses?

In the end it's up to you; you haven't paid anything for the information so it's your choice whether you follow it or go your own way. It's no skin off my nose either way; but as a professional installer myself who does AV installs for a living then I've given you the benefit of my knowledge and experience as someone who regularly encounters the same issue for his clients.

 

[Jupiter01]

Mind blowing @Lucid!
An answer which suggests a suitable size for passing cables through in my situation is all I am after. I was hoping an expert can come along and state that we always use xmm as we need to pass through x, y and z cables. That's all I am after, not the anatomy of the internet!

 

[motorbiking]

The trunking needs to be large enough to get the connector through. So if you are just running a HDMI, a network cable, then 40 x 40 will be fine. I personally find that its easier to pre-lay the common cables and then add some trunking with string in for anything else that comes along. You tend to find that as the technology changes, so do the layout options. A few years ago having the devices under the wall mounted telly was the way to go. my telly now only needs network and aerial, as everything is network based.

There wont be one magic answer here as you can lay anything from 1 or 2 cables to half a dozen, different types and the length of run will also affect how easy it is to pull through.

at the end of the day - patch plastering, sanding and painting isn't that hard.

 

[Lucid]

Mind blowing @Lucid!
An answer which suggests a suitable size for passing cables through in my situation is all I am after. I was hoping an expert can come along and state that we always use xmm as we need to pass through x, y and z cables. That's all I am after, not the anatomy of the internet!

That's just the point, there is no single answer. As motorbiking and I both said, it depends on your particular situation. I have done installs where the TV had nothing but a power lead and single HDMI. On the other end of the spectrum there was an install once where I laid in 3 HDMI, 1 x TV coax, 1 x Sat coax, 3 Ethernet, two power leads, an Optical, a composite video, a VGA and an RGB SCART.

Yeah, I was being sarcastic in the previous reply to highlight how you provided very little info and how you were being lazy. Come on, really... "Where do I buy this stuff from?" and "trying to gauge the size of the wider trunking in your picture".

The thing is you're expecting us to read your mind from the vague description in your OP. So far all you've mentioned is a couple of HDMI leads; nothing about TV coax, Ethernet or anything else apart from some reference to a "decoder" whatever that may be. Does that imply a Freeview or Freesat tuner, or are you running an old Pioneer or Sharp plasma which has an outboard media connection box running from an umbilical cable with a multi-media plug almost as large as a SCART? . Then there's that ominous "etc" which could cover any manner of things, and an equally vague suggestion from you about some sort of future-proofing but nothing hard and fast about what your future plans might include. For all we know here you could be anything from a serious gamer running several platforms right the way done to something all together more vanilla such as someone who only watches a bit of Sky and the odd movie of disc. So you can't really complain that our answers lack the specificity you're looking for when you haven't provided anything solid to work with.