Redecorating our living room.

[Blagadan]

I started redecorating our living room last Friday. Before I get down to prep and painting, I'm chasing walls to run some extra electrical sockets. Unfortunately we dont have stud partitions in our house, instead we have solid concrete block walls which makes running new sockets a real pita.
I decided to run a drop to a position over the fireplace to facilitate a flat screen tv. Even though we dont plan on putting our flat screen up there right now, seeing as I was chasing walls and making a real mess in the living room anyway, I decided to put some outlets up there just in case we change our minds down the road (a mirror will cover the outlets for now).

Before I start replastering, my question is, what else should I run to the outlet over the fireplace?

I have accounted for the following...

1. Single gang electric outlet.
2. Double antenna outlet.
3. Good quality audio cable (for surround sound centre speaker).
4. One empty conduit from the ceiling to a spare outlet for future use (fibreoptics etc, who knows)

Am I missing something? Would any of you guys suggest anything else?

 

[tallyho8]

Sounds like you have things planned pretty well, but a draft beer spigot would be nice.

 

[bigshovel]

I use a length of brass chain to fish through block, works good.

Brad

 

[Blagadan]

Thought of one more thing last night that is important...

....an AV cable to connect the video to the TV. Nearly forgot that!

5. Good quality AV cable.

 

[jwstewar]

I was just getting ready to suggest an HDMI cable. This is the current "standard" for HD TV.

 

[Blagadan]

I was just getting ready to suggest an HDMI cable. This is the current "standard" for HD TV.

Thanks jwstewar. I wish I read your post earlier, I finished plastering the wall about 2 hours ago!!!

....but I still have that 1/2 inch conduit in there, so.....

I took your advice anyway and drove down to my local tv shop to buy a HDMI cable but nearly fell over when he gave me the price of €250 ($315usd) for the 10 metre (33ft) HDMI cable he had in stock!!!

I've got to go to some place like eBay and get one cheaper.

Does anyone know if you can splice a HDMI cable? I have that spare conduit buried in the wall but I dont think a HDMI plug will fit through...

 

[sunspot]

Buy your cable from HDMI Cables from Blue Jeans Cable

They use quality cable (Belden) to make up A/V or HDMI cords.

 

[jwstewar]

Also for good pricing check out FireFold.com - Burning The Competition - Not Your Wallet | HDMI Cable | Wall Mounts | Patch Panels | Component Video Cables | Keystone Jacks | Cat5E Bulk Cable. I've bought several things from them and have been happy with it. Have also had to do a couple of returns and it was painless as well.

Yep, HDMI won't fit through 1/2". I used 3/4" ENT and it wouldn't fit through it either. Fortunately, I was able to fish it up the wall through the instulation beside of my ENT.

 

[JB4310]

When I renovated my new to me 70 year old house I wanted to have all th cables in covered boxes in the walls for future expansion, like cable tv, phone, computer.
Put it all 3 kids rooms, that was 5 years ago and the only one we've used is the cable for TV, everything else is wireless now.
I always run extra conduit to.

 

[Iplayfarmer]

I know that you've already got the wall plastered over by now, but for future reference you might consider Cat 5 cable too. Internet TV is the wave of the future. Of course the Coax you ran for antenna may do the trick. It just depends on how and where you set up the various components of the system.