New Home Construction Advice

[bigmix]

My family and I are in the design and budgeting phase of building, and have several questions that we would like some input on.

A little about the house we are planning:
• 2900-3000 square foot main level rancher with full basement.

What we would like to do:

• 1080p everything if possible.
• An audio/video equipment and server in the basement of the house. Using directtv or dish network as a video source. With the boxes in that room.
• Here will be our video displays: 3-5 bedrooms, 1 bath, kitchen, 3 living rooms and a dedicated theater.
• Plan on using SageTV and extenders as a DVR – media database extender. (Media Server PC in the equipment room).
• Use something like an ipad/pc tablet as a controller.

My questions mainly come from lack of terminology. I would like to know:

• What is the best (quality wise) way of distributing the video? Matrix + long HDMI runs or baluns, or better way.
• I was thinking 2 coax, 5 cat 6e drops at each viewing location, is that enough, what else do I need to do? The CAT 6e drops – (1. TV, 2. Bluray player, 3. Sagetv, 4. Sat receiver, 5. Extra)
• Any other suggestions other than SageTV? I have bluray.
• I was going to use an infrared distribution, but I read that the Tablet control is better. It maybe cost prohibitive though. Any input on this?
• Wanting to do some home automation. I have an electrician that does that, but I want to follow up and make sure I have everything I need. Anybody have any good blogs or information that you care to point me to?
Thank you in advance for the advice.

 

[apostolakisl]

I would recommend running conduit everywhere and not running any wire (or at least minimal wire) at first. If you try to think of every conceivable piece of equipment and then run wires you will end up with way more wire than you ever use, and then you will either 1) forget something, 2) you will change your mind about some equipment, or 3) (and this is the for sure one), technology will change and your wire will be obsolete.

Conduit is dirt cheap. If you use rigid 3/4 plastic conduit your cost will be less than 20cents/ft. If you run every conceivable wire to every location your costs will be several dollars per foot. Then after buying all that wire, you will probably only actually use 10% of it.

Running 1080p is going to be the hardest thing to do. I have several 50 ft hdmi cables in my house and all work perfectly (ebay purchases). Trouble with hdmi is that the plugs are large and don't fit well through conduit (I ran 1.5 in conduit to my tv locations). I see them selling 75ft hdmi on ebay, don't know if that is going to start dropping the signal however.

I have purchased all of the stuff to run a 100 ft hdmi over double cat5. I have not installed that one yet, so I don't know if it is going to work. Cat5 is a lot easier to work with than HDMI so I sure hope it works.

 

[tmbrown97]

To lou's point - instead of pulling HDMI through, check out RapidRun cables - I used them in office scenarios where we had conduit going to a conference table... works great and the head that's on it when it ships is designed for pulling it with a string.

I personally wouldn't skip prewiring in leiu of the conduit - I'd run the wire outside the conduit and leave the conduit for future-proofing. Also, 5 CatX's seems excessive - I ran 3 Cat5 and 3 Coax to each spot in my last house - today I'd only do two of each. You can always use a switch if you need more ports. DirecTV used to require up to 4 cables + ethernet; but the current systems they're installing use a single coax from the dish and to each viewing location - and that includes sat signal and ethernet on one wire. 2nd wire would be for cable or internally modulated channels.

For video I think you either have to distribute HDMI through a matrix switcher or pipe all your sources through Sage and use a simple media extender at each TV. I still keep a bluray player at each TV - now that they're down to $99 for a good sony that'll also stream hulu+, netflix, pandora, and others - it's just a handy device to have in the room.

For home automation - I can recommend a great site with lots of information... it's www.cocoontech.com Everything you could want to learn you should be able to find there.