New House 'Media Wiring' [Archive] - Thoughts Media Forums

SassKwatch

03-16-2006, 02:15 AM

I'm in the process of getting ready to build a new house, and am debating options for 'media wiring' of the structure.

I've seen mention in a couple places of 'Structured Media Bundles' with media outlets placed in all desired rooms. The SMB contain all the various wirings one might need....phone, ethernet, cable/satellite tv, etc. And then a media box is placed in the basement (or convenient location of one's choosing) and all the room wiring is run to it....very similar to electrical infrastructure.

Anyone have any experience outfitting a house in such a manner.....or have any suggestions/links for more info?

Thanks!

freiberghk

03-17-2006, 05:57 AM

Hello SassKwatch (or should i say BigFoot?)

Boy, this is a huge topic that probably will come back to your tastes/budget. My comments in no particular order:
* Phone - If building a new home from scratch, i highly recommend that you go ahead and use Cat 5e cable for the phone runs. You'll only use two wires for now when attaching to RJ11 faceplate, but if you move to digital handsets/VoIP in the future, you will be set.
* Ethernet - Highly recommend that you run Ethernet to RJ45 faceplate alongside your coax cable. I have this in my house to stream hi def to/from various HTPCs and it works great. (Much better than monkeying around with wireless streaming) Another point regarding Ethernet, Most of the new 'In-House' audio systems have moved to using Ethernet. Try looking up 'ZON' systems as a good introduction to how this works and thoughts about where else you might want to run Ethernet.
* Coax Cable - I have three RG6 cable runs to each room in my house. In my family room, i actually fished a fourth cable since I have 4 tuners in my HTPC there. Much better to have all your splices done in one place down in the basement media box.

My own opinion, I probably wouldn't use a Structured Media Bundle because I want more flexibility about where I'm running each of the various components. And in my situation, i wanted 3 coax runs to each room.

Good luck.