I mentioned in a previous e-mail that I was not a fan of coax, nor of telephone wires. So when designing the wiring for the house I decided on a different approach.
First I would like to thank the guys working for Custom Electrical, Paul, Don thanks! They worked with me any some of my more crazy idea, and kept me grounded (no pun intended).
The standard electrical stuff had to be done to meet code, placement of outlets and standard fixtures were included in the price of the house, but the additional work was out of my pocket.
Meda distribution or COAX replacement therapy.
My wife wanted no visible wires, I wanted a centralized media system with the capabilities of watching any source from any room. Perhaps having 2 rooms watch the same media. The hardware chosen determined the cabling needed.
Intelix 4X4 matrix switch: this black box takes in HDMI and converts it to signals sent along standard CAT5e wires. It also returns to the media closet, the IR Control signals needed to control whichever source you are watching.
An added benefit to the system is it has HDMI local outputs, allowing it to drive both the remote TV and a local AV receiver, which handles the surround sound for the great room.
Cat5e wiring:
In each room there are at least 3 runs of Cat45e wires coming back to the media closet. At each location where a TV was planned, 2 Cat5e wires and 2 power outlets are in place, waiting for the TV and balun
Additional Cat5e connection points for plugging in computers at various strategic places throughout the house.
In the media closet, a patch panel was fabricated and installed, all cat5e cables terminate within and the exterior patch-points make hooking up the 4×4 and the network hub easy.