Paul from Toronto asks:

I am interested in creating my first home theatre system. The plan is to run cables behind crown moulding (that I will install). The molding will have a whole drilled for the cable to come out and attach to a wall mounted speaker. Then above the tv, the cables will come down the wall in plastic conduit. For speakers I planned on using a home theater in a box kit. I would also attach either an Apple TV or Airport Express. The system wil be used to watch movies. My questions are:

1) Do you have and recommendations for these kits that costs between
$200-300?
2) Do you see any issues with this?
Thanks in advance

Hi Paul,
That sounds like a good plan, but here are a few suggestions:

Do you already have a receiver and Blu-ray player, or will you be getting a combination?

Most of the all-in-one home theater (also sometimes referred to as home theater in a box) systems come with speaker wire, but if you plan to run the wire in the moulding, you should buy speaker wire rated for in-wall use.

For the wires running down the wall from your TV, make sure the conduit you’re using is compatible with the TV’s power cable.

In the $200-$300 range, you’ll find systems from Panasonic, Samsung, maybe Yamaha that include a receiver/Blu-ray player combination, but you won’t likely find one that will play 3D Blu-rays and the networking capabilities may be limited.

If you’re getting an integrated receiver/player, make sure it has the extra HDMI ports for your cable box and Apple TV.

If you’re willing to spend a little more money, you could look at systems that include wireless surround speakers, which would solve the problem of running speaker wires through your moulding.

good luck
gc

Hi Paul, your plan sounds like a good idea and you can probably go to Home Depot or Lowes (not sure what type of hardware stores you have up in Toronto) and pick up some type of Raceway solution to cover your wire runs. In addition, you also have Best Buy that offers raceway products to cover cables so you have plenty of options in the choice of conduit or raceways.

A couple of things to think about however is the distance between components and whether these distances fall within the safe operational parameters of the HDMI format. Depending on the quality of the HDMI cable you could run into issues with cables longer than 8 meters, and you could also run into trouble concealing any length HDMI cable because of the termination of the cable (the connector). This is not the type of cable where you can “do-it-yourself” so you will have to buy a cable that is already terminated and you’ll have to work with that cable to safely use it within the physical limits of the raceway or conduit. You do not want to damage the HDMI connector and risk it not working (HDMI has plenty of problems without adding to the list).

Addressing your A/V system—-for about the same money as a decent Home Theater in a Box (HTiB) you could get a product like Denon’s AVR-1613 A/V receiver (MSRP $399), Marantz’s NR1403 (MRSP $399) or Pioneer’s VSX-822-K (MSRP $379) which all have built in Apple AirPlay to eliminate the need for an Airport Express or Apple TV and for an incremental added expense add a 5.1 speaker package from companies like PSB (Alpha system), Paradigm (CT 100) for about $1,000.

These system options may be more than what you are looking to spend, but you’ll find that they offer much better performance with movies and music. When combined with the receivers from Denon, Marantz or Pioneer you’ll also be getting the latest in streaming media and home theater processing with the choice of Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Master Audio.

Pair all of this up with some 14/2 (14 gauge, two conductor) speaker cable which you can terminate yourself (add connectors such as banana plugs or spades) and a basic power conditioner and you’ll have a killer home theater that’s capable of music playback for a reasonable amount of money.

that sound like a new plan