Quote:
Originally Posted by 340duster /forum/post/12982406
I am currently wiring my basement for our new home theater, and I would like to know how, anyone has their wires terminated as they come out of the drywall.
There's a variety of options depending on how much wall space you want to use and how much flexibility you want for future expansion/modification. Speakers are pretty easy; just go to the local big hardware store and they may have several options such as pre-made wall plates:
decora mounts:
and keystone inserts:
HDMI is a bit trickier because of the electrical tolerances and connector size. You can definitely get decora versions:
On the rear side will be another HDMI jack, usually straight-through but since HDMI cables can be stiff and hard to bend in the confines of the wall, some will instead have the rear connector at a 90-degree angle or even include a flexible pigtail.
The downside is that a decora approach takes up an entire box section, meaning bigger or more boxes and wall space. Keystone HDMI inserts exist, but there doesn't seem to be much experience with them yet. Here's a
recent thread . I'm going to try some of the trianglecable ones myself and see how it goes.
There are also companies that will make custom wallplates with whatever combination of jacks you want, and some that come preconfigured with the "expected" set of cables such as 5 or 7 speakers plus video.
Worst case, you can just use a plate that has a big hole in it, allowing the cables to be discreetly routed right through the wall surface:
One nice thing about speaker and HDMI cables is that they're in the low-voltage category, so you can use backless boxes and old-work frames instead of trying to cram the connections and bent cable ends into a regular electrical box. Again, you can probably find some selection of these at a big hardware store. For example:
BTW it'll be hard to find something in a store larger than a 2-gang, but you can get them up to 8-gang online:
Personally I'm doing keystone jacks as much as possible. In my equipment room the cables will also end in a big patch panel of keystone slots. It can get pricey because of the added connectors and cable lengths, but I just can't resist the configurability of it.
