I have a number of questions about my home theater setup. I have done a lot of reading, but I'm never real confident I'm understanding everything. So, I thought I'd just ask my questions my way and see if I can get help. There are a bunch of questions I have, and your help with any of them will be much appreciated. I'm sure I could ask some of the questions in different places on the site, but thought I'd just combine them here and see if I get answers to all of my questions.

Thanks in advance for your help. (I apologize in advance for being longwinded. I'm that way on e-mail and voicemail too.) Please remember I'm not real conversant on this stuff, so simple or short answers are a-ok!


My Situation:

I am not quite a newbie, but I nonetheless pretty much am clueless. I had a basement set up at my last house, but my wife and I just moved and we are having the basement redone. (Not starting from scratch, as the basement currently is finished, but we are having a fair amount of work done.) So, I am trying to figure out how to do the home theater again. Not sure I got it 100 percent right last time. Since virtually all wires will be in-wall, I want to be sure I get everything right.

My Equipment:

Panasonic 50" plasma: 50PX50U
AVR: Pioneer VSX-72TXV
Gaming/DVD: PS3
Axiom Audio Speakers (5.1): EP350 Subwoofer
VP150 Center
M60ti Towers
QS8 Surrounds

I have HDMI from PS3 to the AVR and from the AVR to the TV.
I have component for video from the cable box (Comcast cable) to the AVR, and optical audio from the box to the AVR.

The Basement:

Hopefully there is an attachment that shows what I am thinking about for the room configuration (especially since it took a long time to draw the picture on power point). Note that I am still decideing where to put the AVR, PS3, etc. They will either go next to the fireplace on the 87" will, or the 53" wall that has the closet behind it (next to the doorway where I'll have the sofa, etc.)


My Questions:

(1) I am planning on getting a 30' HDMI cable, as I'm not 100 percent sure how it will be run, and I want to be sure to have flexibility (as noted, the HDMI will be behind the wall).
(a) Is there a particular brand and type of HDMI cable I should look at? I currently have monoprice HDMI cables that work fine, but they are quite short. In looking at the Bluejeans site I could not tell whether there is something more to the question than just getting a 30' cable from monoprice.
(b) Do I need to be concerned about the 30' length causing problems?
(c) Should I get 1.3 instead of 1.1?

(2) I think my speaker wire for the back speakers could be about 31' when all is said and done. I was going to get 12 guage, as the price difference between 12 and 14 seems de minimis and again I'd like to err on the side of caution. I used to 12 guage in my last basement, but I don't recall the length of the runs.
(a) Again, any particular brand have any particular benefits (blue jean vs. monoprice).
(b) Within the brands, and particular type I should get (there seems to be some differences in the wires).

(3) Any particular cord safest/best for the sub? Length of the run will depend on where I put the AVR, so it could be quite short or pretty long. At my last house I had problems with hum. I think I used just a basic RCA cord and ended up adding some think to the end that helped with the hum problem.

(4) I was going to put my back speakers on stands (Axiom sells some specifically for my backs)? Any advantage or disadvantage to that? (Part of the reason I may do it is because our new house is a rowhouse, so we share a wall. They are old houses (100 years old), so we are not talking about paper walls or anything, but I want to err on the side of not being an irritant.)

(5) I can probably find these ones out easily, but I'm lazy:
(a) How far should the couch be from the tv (as noted, 50" plasma).
(b) How far should the couch be from the back wall?

(6) My DVD player broke in the move. It was a Sony 400 disk changer. In reading up on things, I came to learn that the PS3 is actually a good bluedisk player. (I did not own any bluedisks until yesterday, when I figured I would check things out. More on that later.) Sounds like it may be o.k. on the SD disks as well. When I watched an SD disk on the PS3 yesterday (the first time doing that), it seemed comparable to the Sony I had. The questions I have are these:
(a) I was going to replace the Sony disk changer with one of the new Oppo SD players. Will the Oppo players have a noticeable improvement in PQ and SQ relative to the PS3?
(b) If so, with my setup, which of the Oppos would you suggest? I am not a real audio or video phile, but do like quality on both fronts.

(7) Any suggestions on where to locate the AVR etc. based on the picture attached and the options noted above?

(8) Is there a way to know what type of picture I am seeing at any particular moment (1080i, 720p, etc.)? I know I am getting 1080i or 720p from the PS3, because of things I cannot do with the TV, but that is all I know.

(9) This has been driving me nuts. My recollection at my last house is that when I watched HD channels the screen was not blackboxed (though I would not swear to that). Since we've moved, HD channels are blackboxed.
(a) Is it supposed to be that way?
(b) If it is not supposed to be that way, any ideas on how I can fix that?
(c) I was going to call the cable company, as I was convinced it was something on their end, but then I put Ironman (blueray) into the PS3 and it is playing blackboxed as well. The picture was incredible, but again I did not expect blackboxing.

(10) As I've been playing with all this stuff (at least I think as I've been playing with it), a new problem appears to have resulted. It's possible I just never noticed before, but I don't think so. Basically, on the TV there are "lines" of sorts that are running through the picture. "Lines" is not a great description, as it's more like a narrow band of fog horizontally across the TV). The narrow band starts at the bottom of the TV (in the aforementioned blackboxes) and makes its way to the top of the TV. It then seems to recycle and start at the bottom again. It is barely noticeable at times (e.g., when the screen is bright), but it is pretty annoying at times. It does not seem to happen with the blueray or standard disks from the PS3, just from the cable box. I've tried three different sets of cables (all from the cable company), and none help. Audio over the optical cable is fine.

(11) Finally, I didn't have wall plates installed at the last house.
(a) Any disadvantage to using them?
(b) How do they work? In other words, does the contractor have the speaker wire connected to the plates inside the wall, and then I can just use banana plugs and run a short wire from the plate to the speaker?

Admitting that you're too lazy is not admirable. You can find all your answers with two very readily available tools. Your user manuals and www.google.com. The time it took you to type all that out you could have had atleast half those questions answered if you tried to look them up.

As I mentioned in my note, I have spent many an hour reading manuals and threads on this and other sites, as well as any number of hours playing with different connections in my basement. The few questions I was being "lazy" about were things I thought people would have an opinion on off the top of their heads given the specifics of my room. I did not think including the word "lazy," which was intended to be tongue in cheek, would put anybody off.

To be clear, this is not really a response to Mr. Audio's post, as I would not dignify that post with a response. This is more of an observation for someone who may actually want to be helpful.

It wasn't just the fact that you used the word lazy, but the length of your post is nothing short of lazy. It's ignorant to leave a post that looks like a homework sheet and expect everyone else to fill in all the blanks for you. If you read all your manuals and did actually do some research as your post suggests, your post would have been a small fraction of what it is. The reason nobody is killing themselves to get to your plethora of questions is because nobody likes to do someone elses homework.

Let me be clear. You want people to help? Save the real issues for the post and research the small stuff.

And just to get you started (I am bored).

1) Follow the advice here: http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/hdmi-cables.htm. BlueJean HDMI cables were well reviewed in an independent comparison.

2) Go 12 gauge - BlueJean again.

3) Any half decent RCA cable will work fine. Since you're probably buying stuff from BlueJean, just grab something decent from their site.

4) I presume we're talking stands vs wall mount? Stands will allow you to move the further away from the wall which may or may not improve the sound. Other than that you don;t have to drill holes in the wall.

5) As far as you like. Alltough heres a good place to start: http://www.carltonbale.com/2006/11/1080p-does-matter/
10 -14 feet looks like a good starting point.

6) Stick with the PS3 if you already have it. SQ will be the same, PQ will be hard to tell any difference.

7) can't view the .doc file so won't comment.

8) Your TV remote should have an info button. Press it and it should show the current input resolution. Note all flat panel TVs have fixed output resolutions, in your case everything is scaled to 1366x768.

9) Make sure your TV is set to 16:9 and play around with its zoom modes if you want to get rid of the black bars. PS we're talking bars at top/bottom, not left/right, correct?

10) Sounds like interference or a faulty box. Can you get a cable box with HDMI out?

11) Wall plates can help tidy up the cable mess, yes you can use short runs of cable with banana plugs at each end. PS if you get wall plates, make sure the installer uses decent gauge cable for the internal wiring.

PS Mr.Audio. does have a point, buy the time I got to question 7 or 8 I fell like I was doing someones research for them.

Thanks gooki. I appreciate the time you spent responding to my questions.

i would only take issue with two of teh above--10-14 ft for a 50" tv sounds like a lot to me--I sit about 10 ft back from a 52" and it looks terribly small but i also have a 106" pj screen in front of it so I suppose that makes my point of reference a bit skewed although it seemed as such even before I got the pj--my wife also agred with that as well...

also you may get a better upconverted pic from the oppo--several people have commented as such on these threads but i am not sure in your situation it would be worth the money to you to do so unless you want sacd and dvda via analog in which case you would definitely benefit from a new oppo.

as for posts--you may want to ask a few questions that are the most important in your first post and then ask f/u questions to avoid enraging the masses--i personally have no problem with what you did--no one has to answer all or any of them if they dont want to. good luck my friend!

cheers

Thanks Denophile. Much appreciated. On distance from the screen, I was most concerned I would not have enough distance, but it sounds like I'll be o.k. on that front. I can certainly move the couch closer to the screen than the back wall if that works best. I'll probably pass on the Oppo at this point. Something I can add later if I decide I want it.

As to your last piece of advice, that sounds like the better approach than the one I took, and I will certainly heed your advice (which I think was the same thing gooki was suggesting) for any future posts I make.