One of my projects this weekend was to de-clutter the mess of tangled wires and boxes that was my home theater system. It has always driven me crazy that in order to have a nice TV set up, you always ended up with a huge mess of wires and boxes next to your TV. Below are the before pics:
Front view-
Not so bad from the front, but from the side/behind… man what a mess. Even with everything zip tied it’s still a rat’s nest.
The good news is that my TV backs up to my stairs, and like most homes with stairs I have closet space underneath the stairs directly behind the TV. Since my house is older and isn’t pre-wired for an infrared system, my plan was to move the boxes into the closet, run the wires through the wall, and use an IR repeater to get the remote controls to work. More on how those work in a second.
The process was pretty simple. I drilled two 1 inch holes through the plactic junction box behind the plate where my cable/fios line came out. I went through the box, an through the wall into the closet. I then also drilled holes in the face plate so I could fit more wires through.
I ran everything through the wall, and set up my cable, DVD, and receiver in the closet. I bought these x10 IR repeaters to let me use the remote controls through the wall. Basically I have one of these little pyramids on top of my TV. It gets the signal (infrared) from the remote when I push a button. It broadcasts that signal via radio signal to the other pyramid in the closet. That pyramid then transmits the same signal in infrared instantly. You don’t have to program the pyramids, or enter any codes. It is just repeating whatever your remote you already have programed is sending out.
Below is the finished project. As you can see I have a lot less clutter around the TV and speakers. Since there are so few wires behind the TV now, I was able to move it another 8 or 10 inches closer to the wall, and that really helped open up the room a little bit more. So far, the pyramids are working well, and seem to be well worth the 50 bucks.
You can see how small the pyramid is next to the center speaker on top of the TV.
From above looking down:
Well worth the money so far!
Now that’s quite a project. Good job!
I thought that universal remote you have is an RF remote.
nope. just old school IR.