I"m having a hard time deciding on a LCD Bracket?

Really hard to beat Monoprice for selection, quality, and of course price.

Here's just one of many that should fit your bill.

Ditto Possum. Can't go wrong with Monoprice. I went with their 3725 model. All I can add is to check and see if your stud spacing is standard. These things are heavy so make sure you have someone to help you with the install (and read the Monoprice reviews.) All you need is a stud finder, portable drill, and a socket set.

Let me guess... mounting over a fireplace?

If it's "solid" brick, they make expandible anchors that can be sunk after pre-drilling with a masonry bit.

If it's a "veneer" type of brick, then there are studs in the wall.

How are you going to hide the wires?

IMO... you need to determine "what's" behind the place you intend to mount the TV and go from there.

Good ideas... but, you have no idea what you have to work with and/or construction obstacles that you may encounter. Once you rip out... then decide on what's doable.

And for a suggestion, if you're putting a stone/brick veneer over whatever you find, don't use plywood. Use a cement based backerboard/wonderboard.

It's not as easy as they make it seem on HGTV.

Excuse me for saying this, but "UGH!" I can't imagine having a swivel bracket on a TV over the fireplace that will also safely hold a center channel speaker. For the TV to swivel, the mount will have to position the TV far enough from the wall to allow your 69 pound, 55" TV and still be able to support the center channel speaker of undetermined weight.

Call me skeptical, but... (you finish the sentence).

Good idea.
Over the Fireplace may be "cool", but not practical.

It's probably easier (and less expensive) to remove the fireplace and use that as the entertainment center.

If you forego having a "real" 5.1 surround system and have an issue with:
1) mounting a TV over the fireplace
2) mounting a center channel speaker properly

... how does a soundbar make things better or easier?

IMHO... sick crazy is trying to make a functional entertainment area based on a fireplace.

Hey, do as you please it's your home. But I think that after a few months, you may regret the intial expense to retrofit and not enjoying your TV.

Have fun!

In reference to the bolded sentences above, not much.

Since we don't know the configuration of the room, it's hard to make constructive suggestions. However, many of us on this Forum think that mounting a TV above the fireplace is generally always a bad idea, especially when you have to retrofit the space to make it acceptable, functional, cool, or in your words "sick" and/or "crazy."

And, since I'm sure I'm a bit older than you, the idea does sound kind of "sick & crazy" to me as in the Webster definition as opposed to the more "modern" definition.

Mounting a TV on a wall = good idea.

Mounting a TV above a fireplace with an extendable swivel mount and trying to squeeze in a center channel speaker, soundbar, or whatever while trying to hide all wires and making the whole installation safe and aesthetically pleasing = bad idea.

But, to paraphrase what others have said, your money and your choice. Good luck.

My suggestion?

Lose the fireplace. It's the most useless thing you'll ever own.

As suggested in post #12


And I can't understand how the OP believes a soundbar is lighter than a speaker.
I'd suggest he call Mike Holmes and "Make it right!"

I have my set mounted over a fireplace, using a tilt mount that allows the TV to be basically perpendicular to my line of sight. The wire-hiding was made easier by the wall above the fireplace being drywall on studs. So I used a "Power Bridge" set of wall plates/fixtures to bring power over, and also multiple HDMI cables. But I still had to deal with the issue of getting past two studs, to get "around" the fireplace.

One idea that may also be pertinent to your situation is that I used my wooden mantle-top as a routing area for the horizontal portion of my wire runs. I brought power and HDMIs down from the TV to the mantle top, and then from the end of the mantle top I went back into the wall, to drop down to floor level, bypassing two studs. I also ran speaker wires from the right end of the mantle, over to the left end (for the left-front speaker), and also to a hole going down through the mantle for the center speaker wire. (My electronics - incl. receiver, cable box, blu-ray player, plus a turntable, are in a basic A/V rack that sits to the right of the fireplace - just to the right of my right-front speaker.)

The center speaker is mounted on some brackets that in turn are screwed into a facia board that is just under the mantle.

So at that point I had the vertical runs of all wires inside the walls, but a lot of wires running across the top of the mantle. So I made a new, false, mantle top. I put some 1x2 strips on top of the sides and front edge of the mantle,creating a kind of wooden fence around the wires, with a few extra little pieces of 1x2 spaced out on the rear edge of the mantle. Then I laid a new piece of 1x8 (actually only 7 1/4" wide) across the top, and trimmed it out with some decorative molding (slightly wider than the thickness of the 1x8), so that all of the wires are covered up. If I ever need to get at them for some reason, I just need to pry up the new top board. Once painted, the mantle is a little thicker/taller than before, but looks like it was built that way from the beginning.

On the other hand, if my fireplace had been brick all the way up, I don't think I would have proceeded with mounting the TV above it!

But WAF (wife acceptance factor) can be important. My wife is happy that the corner where the TV would otherwise have been, is now freed up for an easy chair. And actually the sound of my Def Tech bipolar towers is improved by having them a bit in front of a flat wall, and not in a corner arrangement. My wife is not crazy about the size of the speakers, but that is her part of the compromise...

If you truly want your TV to swivel and tilt and all that and want to somehow mount a center channel to the same mount, then let me also present you with another potential problem. If you plan on connecting whatever center channel you get to a modern AVR of some sort, that tilting/swiveling of your TV+Center combo may actually wreak havoc on any room correction (Audyssey, ARC (Anthem), etc.) you happen to perform with said AVR. Room correction, in my experience, usually bases its calculations on fixed speaker positions in relation to a fixed viewing position. By altering any of these fixed positions, you're altering the sound dynamics that have already been calculated by your AVR. Each and every time you tilted or swiveled the TV+Center channel to a different position, you would have to redo the room setup through your AVR to recapture the dynamics.

In other words, you're probably better off trying to mount the center channel in a fixed position to maintain any sort of "home theater" type sound dynamics than to have it tilt and swivel with the TV.

Sound bars don't have speaker wire connectors and so don't accept conventional speaker wire. Most do have left and right analog audio RCA jacks. You could run speaker wire to all the other speakers from the speaker wire terminals on your receiver and line level RCA cables from the center channel Pre-Out terminals on your receiver to the analog audio ins on the sound bar, assuming the receiver has multichannel pre-outs (most do and are meant to be used when the reciever is being used as a Pre-amp/processor feeding external amps).

From the standpoint of audio performance this isn't nearly as good an idea as just using a conventional center channel speaker--timbre matching won't be good (audio frequency response characteristics of the sound bar won't match well with those of the other speakers), volume control will be problematic since you'll be daisy chaining two volume controls (the receiver's and the sound bar's) for the center channel only keeping volume levels for all the speakers matched will be difficult at different volume settings.

As previously stated by another poster having the center channel swivel along with the set will upset the acoustic characteristics of the system to a large degree.

Having a wide enough shelf for a conventional center atop the fireplace would be a better solution than having it mounted to the set's swivelling wall mount-eliminates weight concerns as well as questionable audio quality and simplifies wiring to a certain extent.

I think you're being a bit harsh on those Fireplace naysayers (I have to admit that I usually would qualify myself as one of these). They're coming from the standpoint of what works best for performance and practicality of a Home Theater system, not what looks the coolest to an Interior Decorator, and while they may come across as uncompromising their intentions are good. Frankly you seem to come from the other side of the equation--willing to sacrifice all for the sake of interior decorating priorities. A little compromise on both sides should come close to achieving your original goal.

Best of luck and I hope you'll post the final results for our admiration.

When you ask for suggestions, don't be indignant when you get an answer you don't want to hear. Everyone tries to provide a logical solution/recommendation for your benefit.

You can do as you please. Don't shoot the messengers.
The caveat being, we retain the right to say, "I told you so!".

Steve & Ratman, thanks for your insight. I had thought about replying also, but you two put it so eloquently that I couldn't add anything any better.

However, I would add one thing in the interest of providing advice rather than criticism (you never know how the Thead Starter will take it)... In a recent thread posted by someone who used a swivel mount (don't think it was a fireplace installation), the LCD panel actually flexed to the point that it caused some screen distortion or breakage due to rough handling. It may have been an LED/LCD rather than a CCFL/LCD like I believe the Thread Starter's Toshiba is. Anyway, just something else to be aware of.

Signed,
BoilerJim (resident arrogant "@**whole")