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...to hide wires in the wall so they don't hang under your wall mounted TV, what connectors would you put on the wall plate? Currently, I have a 5-Gang plate being designed to have...

3 HDMI
2 F-Type (Coax)
2 RJ-45 (Cat5e)
2 RCA Composite (Y + R/W)
2 RCA Component (R/G/C + R/W)
1 VGA

I don't know why I drafted this for a VGA so I might switch it for a DVI... or maybe scrap that altogether and go with another HDMI.

Now, here come the questions...

1) The connectors between the RCA Composite and Component don't really matter, do they? I wanted to have the two Composite sets for the Game Cube and the PS2... but if I ever needed to switch out to another 5-Plug Component cable (Assuming the two Component set's are used.), I could technically use the two Composite sets to feed that data, right?

2) DVI or HDMI?

3) Looking forward, is there any emerging AV technology I should have included in the designs? I can't think of anything... but I was hoping someone here might know of the next big thing.

Thanks for yer replies.

I thought this was a thread for

http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=1167

I was hoping for Alterac Valley, too.

I'd love to help, but I'm still using coax cables.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

You may want to slide in some fiber optic for digital audio. It doesn't seem to have really taken off as much as I would have thought it should have, but there's no telling what the future holds.

I can easily see ditching copper in favor of glass down the line for a number of technologies, so a few pairs of fiber that may or may not connect to anything immediately may not be a terrible idea. Just leave 'em bundled and hanging out un-terminated in the bottom of the receptacle.

Terminating fiber is not cheap, so maybe it won't actually go anywhere. Copper solder is dirt cheap by comparison.

Also, all the TVs I looked at before I purchased mine a month or so ago either had VGA or no VGA/DVI. I don't think I saw a single one that had just DVI. That said, you can always buy an adapter to convert one to the other. Not so easy to convert a HDMI connection to either, however. You can always put a switchbox-thing at the head end if you end up with more than your 3 HDMI connections.

I'm not really a fan of HDMI. Sure it's got tons of bandwidth, but the base layer communications just seem like crap to me. After the new TV, I plugged up the cable box with HDMI, and it constantly has to be un-plugged to resync. I've also seen problems with more than one PS3 completely jacking up the audio and having to reconnect the HDMI cable to resync more than once before a solid audio channel is finally presented.

yeah yeah, tldr

Alrighty, if anyone ever wants to hide the wires in the wall this is what I'm doing...

The wall plate I wanted to get built (by Markertek)was going to be a 5-gang plate that had all sorts of shit in it. The problem was finding a 5-gang box for in the wall wasn't easy. I ended up dropping 1 RJ45, 1 F-Type and the VGA connectors so the design could fit a 4-gang box... but even then, the company wanted $270 to make the two stainless steel plates. I ended up ordering a bunch of Decora Keystone inserts and the 6-port Decora Wallplate to put all that shit in. That will run about $120 for two plates. The 4-gang low-voltage old-work boxes can be found on Amazon for $5/ea + Shipping... but I'm gunna try to cut the back off a normal blue box and see if I get the same results for less money. On the back-side of the plates, I'm going to put two access panels so I can get in and out of the wall easily if I ever need to reconnect something, fish more wire, secure something, etc etc. Might be overkill, but $8/panel is cheap for the convenience. (The backside of the wall is in a laundry room so I don't care if the access panels are unsightly.)

Also, I found one of these PowerBridge Single Solution Kits online for about $45. It works well and hides power cables in the wall.

Also, if anyone is going to hang a 50" plasma to the wall... the wall mounts suggest you screw into two studs. Where I wanted to hang the TV I only had one stud available... so I used a 2x10 to beef up the backside of the wall. The 2x10 was glued/nailed to two 2x4, and then it was gluded/nailed in the stud cavity. (I put glue on the front to stop any vibration against the wall) This method worked really well but I had to cut out the backside of the wall... that's the only downside.

(An alternate method I used to hang the 30" in the bedroom is to take a 3/4" plywood board and screw it into the studs on the front of the wall... then screw the mount to that board. If you paint it the same color as the wall and use a decorative trim around the edge it looks really clean.)