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  #1  
Old 07-07-2008, 07:20 PM
Jason Dunn
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Default I'm Doing a Digital Wall Upgrade: Suggestions Welcome!

2008 is "The Year of the House" in the Dunn household, and that means upgrading our living environment. Ashley and I have been in our house for nearly seven years now, and seven years of living in the same place tends to create wear and tear. Beyond some of the basics such as getting the walls re-painted and a few yard-based projects completed (have I mentioned how much I loathe yard work?), we've decided to re-do the main wall in our living room. Here's how it looks today:

It has suited its purpose thus far, but we want to evolve it further. Beyond the LCD TV hooked up to a computer in my downstairs office, the only TV we have in our house is the Toshiba DLP in the bonus room upstairs. That's our media room, and it's set up nicely for our use - but it can't accommodate more than three people on the single couch. We can fit more if they don't mind sitting on the floor with big pillows, but it's not ideal. We've discovered this year that we really want to be able to watch a DVD, or looks at pictures, in an environment that can fit more people - so we're going to transform our living room (which can fit eight to ten people comfortably on three couches) into something that will allow us to do exactly that.

The only digital element in the photo above is a Roku Soundbridge audio player, connected to a pair of Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers - the sub-woofer is right below the speakers, hidden from view by the couch. What we want to do is add a 42" or perhaps 46" LCD TV smack in the middle of the wall, right above the fireplace. The problem of course is that we didn't wire up the wall for that purpose, so we're going to need to rip up the wall to get it done. I've had an electrician come in, and what we're going to do is run power and coaxial cable up from the left to the middle of the wall. On the right is where I'm going to be placing the home theatre PC (more on that later), so we're going to have a conduit run down the wall where I can connect cables. Everything will terminate behind where the TV will go, and we're going to be ripping open that wall to add support for the TV mounting bracket.

On the TV front, I definitely want to go LCD and not Plasma, and I've been eyeing the Sharp Aqueos line over the past couple of weeks - I did a comparison of similar Sharp, LG, and Samsung TVs and the Sharp had superior reproduction of black levels and shadows. Since we're going to be using this TV to display my photos, I care about how well the TV can reproduce subtle visual elements, and the Sharp seems to have an advantage in that area. Any other TVs I should consider?

We also want to upgrade our shelving, and below is a design we saw in Thailand that we thought was incredibly cool. Our design will be slightly different, but the basic idea of each shelf being a single flowing line is what we want to capture. Of course, we're waiting to hear back from a carpenter about whether or not this will be possible to re-create, so we'll see...

On the PC front, I was thinking of using a Shuttle SD02XD. Ideally I'd want to run a single HDMI cable to the TV to get both audio and video, but does the on-board video solution on the Shuttle (an Intel GMA 950) need to support HDMI, or is an adaptor all I need? I wish Shuttle was using an embedded ATI GPU instead. I suppose I could build a regular-sized Shuttle and pick my components to include a real GPU, but I want to keep the PC as small and as quiet as possible. Suggestions welcome.

That's about it for now - as you can tell, in some ways I have more questions than answers, but I thought it would be worth sharing this journey with Digital Home Thoughts readers.

UPDATE: The digital wall project is complete. Read all about it!

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He really hopes this project goes well.

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  #2  
Old 07-07-2008, 07:49 PM
uzziah0
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On the non-tech side, you might want to consider painting using two colors. Two or three walls one color and the remaining walls another color. We've done this in our living room / dining room and again in our bedroom. The different colors (if chosen well) punch up the room.
When we did the work, we hired someone to help pick colors. We picked up some samples from the paint store, and figured out some options for the other things in the room (like drapes) and the designer helped up pick great colors. It was worth the $100 or so she charged.

Another thing, when you're electrician figures out where he needs to cut out some drywall, you might have your general contractor actually cut the hole; since he'll be the one to fix the hole. Our electrician cut huge holes when he did stuff, and then our general contractor had to re-cut the holes anyway (not placed where then need to be for patching up the holes.

Good luck, have fun, and take pictures.
 
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  #3  
Old 07-07-2008, 08:20 PM
Jason Dunn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by uzziah0 View Post
On the non-tech side, you might want to consider painting using two colors. Two or three walls one color and the remaining walls another color.
Ah yes, a feature wall. We discussed doing this, and really wanted to, but ultimately realized we couldn't. If you look at the picture in the upper right corner you can just see the first bar of a set of rails. We have a section of our wall cut away where the stairs go up to our second level...which means the whole wall is essentially one piece and we could find no way to have a feature wall without painting the WHOLE thing - and it goes up 20 feet on the other side outside that picture.

Quote:
Originally Posted by uzziah0 View Post
Another thing, when you're electrician figures out where he needs to cut out some drywall, you might have your general contractor actually cut the hole; since he'll be the one to fix the hole.
Thanks for the advice - the electrician we're using works with the drywall guy he recommended, so I'm hoping that means the two of them will coordinate. But I'll make sure of that before they start hacking at our walls.
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  #4  
Old 07-07-2008, 10:51 PM
entropy1980
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So my question.... why not Plasma? My brother just picked up a new 52" Aquos and while nice, its contrast and black levels still pale in comparison to my Panisonic Plasma. Just curious why you chose LCD, I mean some of my smaller sets are LCD but for my main viewing I couldn't settle for anything less... just my $.02.
 
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  #5  
Old 07-07-2008, 10:56 PM
Phronetix
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Hey Jason,

Out of interest, why did you want LCD over plasma? Everyone seems to have their reasons, and I have never heard yours.

I will admit to being totally pleased with our Pioneer plasma since we got it a couple months ago. LCD's were always a distant third after Pioneer and Panasonic plasma sets in my buying project, or as my wife called it, "Dennis' Project to Delay Buying a TV for Months or Maybe Years".

;-)
 
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  #6  
Old 07-07-2008, 10:57 PM
ptyork
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The only other point I might make is that you may consider running Cat5/6 AND HDMI into the same junction box as your coax. You'll also be running all three of these to your HTPC box, so it might make sense to have your electrician "T" the conduit at the level of the TV and run a pipe to the junction box. This way you can run all three of these through the same conduit.

Also, looking at the picture and knowing what little I do about wiring, it looks as though you already have an outlet on the right that is likely either the beginning or the end of a circuit. Either way, it would be trivial to run power from this outlet up to the tv box and thus remove the need to tear up another section of wall. You'll likely be moving your power outlets to be nearer your components on that wall anyway and will thus be doing quite the damage to that side of the wall already. Why destroy both.
 
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  #7  
Old 07-07-2008, 11:17 PM
ptyork
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Re: LCD vs. Plasma, for me it came down to power consumption.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6475_7-6400401-3.html

I didn't have the budget or space for it (bedroom set this time around--I got the LG 42LG30 on sale this weekend at CC for < $900), but if you do, the Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ800U looks to be a good, no-compromise set. If other manufacturers follow suit with power savings, then the plasma vs. LCD debate might get back into full swing.
 
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  #8  
Old 07-07-2008, 11:51 PM
Jason Dunn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by entropy1980 View Post
So my question.... why not Plasma?
Well, I've heard that plasma sucks up about 2x the power of LCDs, and that's something I'd like to avoid. As well, my general feeling is that Plasma is "old school" in terms of longevity because they've historically had problems...but I have to admit I haven't really looked hard at modern plasmas and may not be giving them a chance.

One factor swaying me toward the Sharp is that I can get it for cost + 5% from my local electronics store, which is about $1650 or so for the 46" model.
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  #9  
Old 07-08-2008, 12:03 AM
Jason Dunn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ptyork View Post
The only other point I might make is that you may consider running Cat5/6 AND HDMI into the same junction box as your coax.
Well, unfortunately because of the way the wiring was done in that room, I have power + coaxial cable on the left side of the fireplace, and power + Ethernet on the right side of the fireplace. So we have to rip up both sides of the drywall to get everything run into the center.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ptyork View Post
You'll also be running all three of these to your HTPC box, so it might make sense to have your electrician "T" the conduit at the level of the TV and run a pipe to the junction box. This way you can run all three of these through the same conduit.
I did a poor job explaining what was going to happen, but yes, that's exactly what we're doing - on the right side of that photo, we're going to run vaccu-flo pipes to create a conduit that will allow me to run future cables if I want from the box behind the TV (the mounting bracket essentially) down to the vaccu-flo port that will be down and hidden by the couch. On the left side, there won't be a conduit, we're just pulling the power + cable (coax) up and over - but that will require ripping up the drywall as well.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ptyork View Post
...it looks as though you already have an outlet on the right that is likely either the beginning or the end of a circuit. Either way, it would be trivial to run power from this outlet up to the tv box and thus remove the need to tear up another section of wall.
We're going to run power from the left side of the wall, but on the right side I still need the conduit for HDMI + whatever other cables I want to run...so I think we need to rip up the drywall for that. Or are you suggesting something different?
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  #10  
Old 07-08-2008, 01:05 AM
Jason Dunn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Phronetix View Post
I will admit to being totally pleased with our Pioneer plasma since we got it a couple months ago.
Where did you even see Pioneer plasmas? Neither Visions, nor Best Buy, nor Future Shop carry them in Calgary.
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