New House what to wire for

qaz123

Currently building a new house and meeting electrician at weekend so looking for suggestions on what to get wired for

Current set up is computer with all my media in spare room running plex streaming using nowtv to plasma tv in sitting room with a soundbar

New house will eventually have 3-4 tv thinking of wiring cat 5e or cat 6 to all possible tv points and all bedroom and running back to switch in cupboard underneath stairs. This cabinet will also hold my pc which I will connect to main tv with hdmi cable and use with a wireless keyboard and mouse

Will this setup allow me to stream different movies on different tv at same time?
Is it better to have a deadicated htpc than buying a Nas

What else should I be looking into including in my wiring to ensure house is future proof

Sorry for long post bit of a newbie when it comes to this setup

mass_debater

Run 2x cat5e or cat6 to every tv and add one or two extras as spares to main tv

Wanderer78

Is it worth running fibre round the house or is it a bit over enthusiastic about future proofing? I'd probably run cat 6 myself just for piece of mind.

rampantbunny

qaz123 wrote: »

Currently building a new house and meeting electrician at weekend so looking for suggestions on what to get wired for

Current set up is computer with all my media in spare room running plex streaming using nowtv to plasma tv in sitting room with a soundbar

New house will eventually have 3-4 tv thinking of wiring cat 5e or cat 6 to all possible tv points and all bedroom and running back to switch in cupboard underneath stairs. This cabinet will also hold my pc which I will connect to main tv with hdmi cable and use with a wireless keyboard and mouse

Will this setup allow me to stream different movies on different tv at same time?
Is it better to have a deadicated htpc than buying a Nas

What else should I be looking into including in my wiring to ensure house is future proof

Sorry for long post bit of a newbie when it comes to this setup

If you 're meeting your sparks this weekend and are only trying to determine now what you should wire for then you might have left it a bit late. However, your electrician might be one of those rare finds that has done this sort of thing before, so worth asking his opinion. There are lots of posts detailing the various approaches others have taken so here's my 2c...

I didn't set out with an exact plan in mind as to how I'd route my media or what exact equipment I'd have. Instead I tried to put in as much cable as I thought I'd need and then lost the plot and put in more...

E.g. I ran 4 CAT 6 and 4 Sat cable from attic to each TV point. At the main TV points I also installed a 32mm waste pipe in wall back to attic to allow pulling additional cable from attic later (attic is my central node/home zero btw).

If you are sitting your media in a unit on the floor and will have your TV wall mounted, run a duct in-wall so that you can route your HDMI cable or whatever from the floor equipment to the TV - this keeps it hidden. Again 32mm waste pipe would do the job.

I ran alarm cable to usual points around the house, and also ran a CAT 6 cable to those points (thinking the CAT 6 might be useful for an IP camera or other in future).

I ran CAT 6 and doorbell cable to doorbell location...probably never use the CAT 6 but it's there anyway.
Also ran ducting from attic to utility in the hope that in some distant future fibre will be available in my area and I can bring it into utility and route to attic.

In each bedroom I ran two CAT 6 for something...no idea why.
I ran a CAT 6 to where a thermostat might be installed in the hallway, CAT 6 to location of heat pump for network connectivity if required, CAT 6 to location of MHRV. Extra light duty electric cable to wall plates outside bathrooms in case a local boost switch is required for MHRV. CAT 6 to front porch awning for a sensor/camera. CAT 6 to various corners of house, again for camera. CAT 6 to location of external bulkhead lights. Ducting to garage which enters utility to allow routing of cable to garage for alarms, sensors etc.
Have provisioned for ducting to front gate for intercom and the like.

Main thing is to install conduit where you can. Some house layouts mean it's difficult to route conduit around the place but you should at least try. Hope this helps.

Mickalus

A central PC/Server will certainly be able to provide different content to multiple TV's and Tablets etc at once.

Have a think about Audio around the house too - streaming from plex/spotify, multi-room audio etc,
CCTV / alarm systems / sensors.
Any home automation too - pretty much everything is going "Smart" and can make use of a Cat5/6 cable, so if you run plenty of conduit as suggested above, that will future proof your house.

Re: Dedicated htpc vs NAS - many different ways to skin that cat - both approaches will work.
For Plex - it can transcode the content so that any device can play it. Transcoding requires CPU power, dedicated htpc will generally have a better CPU than a NAS. The more devices you have requesting transcoded media, the more CPU power you might need.
A lot of content will not need any transcoding at all.

Johnboy1951

Will you want LiveTV from Satellite and/or Saorview aerial?

There is no problem distributing different streams to different locations at the same time.
For the most part that does not take much CPU power, but if you need media to be transcoded then that is where the CPU power will become a consideration.
For instance I can distribute 6 (that I have tried) HD LiveYV channels from a HTPC/Server box with a P4 Dual core CPU!
I am withdrawing all the coax that was originally put into 'TV Points' in the various rooms and replacing them with Cat5e.
I *might* be persuaded to use Cat6 sometime, but the runs are fairly short so I don't see the need.
It is probably early days to be considering fibre, but if you are comfortable with it and prepared for some extra costs then it would surely be future proofed for a long time. Cat5e/Cat6 will be good for 10 years and more I reckon.

qaz123

thanks guys for the reply.

going running cat 6 from all bedrooms to my media cabinet underneath stairs as well as 4 x cat 6 from tv points. this should give me plenty of options to stream my media over local network.

not 100% sure what to do regarding tv points.
for any rooms with tv will should i install two co-ax cables and if I want to add sky at this point should I have four co-ax points?
Will all these co-ax cables be routed to a central point in the attic space or should i run them first to media cabinet and then to tv points

want to have options for saorview, free to air and sky in the future

Johnboy1951

I have tuners in my HTPC/Server backend and all devices on the LAN (wired or wireless) can receive all tunable channels.
That includes Saorview and FTA Satellite channels.
So Cat5e is well capable of managing that.
Any recordings made are stored on the server and available to all users on the LAN.
No co-ax needed at all.

That you might require Sky is a separate consideration, and a complication.
I read that Sky are going to IPTV also with their Sky Q set up, but it might be too early for that, and if so Sky distribution will require co-ax. It might be worthwhile getting further info on Sky Q in this regard.

If Sky allowed their card to be used in non-Sky hardware it would be easy to integrate the Sky channels into IPTV distribution over ethernet cable. Unfortunately this is not the case. You are forced to use whatever hardware Sky provides to use their card.

Johnboy1951

{for some reason I was unable to post the complete text }

There is also something fairly new that might interest you, as you are 'future proofing'.
Available now are complete Sat 'dishes' with built in LNB that only require a single Cat6 cable providing power over ethernet to the LNB, and outputting IPTV to your LAN. No co-ax needed.
Search for Sat>IP to get information.

It really depends on yourself and how you see things going in the future, and whether you want to drop the 'legacy' stuff now or run cables for both legacy and future set ups.