I have just mounted my new LCD TV onto the wall and it looks great, apart from all the cables.

I can't really decide what to do with them. There's always the chopping out the wall option but this is hard work and won't allow for extra leads in the future.

Obviously there are other options too such as using plasterboard to make a "fake" wall and then hide the cables behind that.

Also where should I put my AV equipment ?? At the moment it is just sitting on the floor !

Has anyone else got round these issues in the past ? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

what about a peice of white electrical trunking? if your walls are painted you could paint over the trunking so it blends into the wall..... you can then just unclip the top of the trunking when you want to add/remove cables

if your av equipment is on the floor i hope its not a carpet floor as that wont do the equipment any good!

Yeah i was thinking about trunking but I want to make it completely invisible you see !

It's a wooden floor not a carpet so they should be ok

well looks like your going to have to get your hammer and chissel then! unless you happen to have a cuboard behind the wall so you could simply drill through the wall behind the tv and poke the cables through and then make another hole wherever your av equipment is going to be and poke the cables back through.....

thats fine then

I too debated about the cables dropping from my wall mounted plasma screen down to the AV boxes on the stand below it - in the end I went with some self-adhesive trunking and painted it the same colour as the wall - it looks OK - ideally at some point in the future I will bury them in the wall but as you say it is a pain if you want to change anything and I am a compulsive cable changer!

- Simon.

yeah using trunking is the easiest thing to do and allows you to change the cables easily.

even if you do want it invisible magga then just try the trunking first as its only a pound or two depending what size you need, if you don't like it then you know you'll have to chissel the wall away.

I have a wall mounted plasma and have had the same dilema as you. What i did was use the old hammer and chisel for the cable runs and put in every current cable even if my current plasma or sky+/dvd recorder do not currently use them. (Yes there are about 5 cables which go no where) What i then did was buy a lovely oak sideboard to house the sky+ box and dvd recorder and after cutting a hole in the back of that put them inside hidden away and also use a magic eye sitting on the top to facilitate changing channels so i really only have to have the door open when playing a DVD.

I thought that this might give you a few ideas especially the sideboard thing as i don't know about you but i really love these "ugly" boxes hidden away.

When I fit a nice wall mounted TV I tend to drop a couple of nice large tubes in the wall, either 20 or 25mm conduit or, if possible, something bigger like 30-40mm waste pipe.

20 and 25mm tube is a lot easier to bend at the ends though.

I did the plasterboard false wall option behind my LCD. Papered and painted to look like the real wall. If you take it right down to the floor cables can then be hidden under edge of carpet.
Looks rather good and can quite easily be removed when extra cables need adding for any new toys.
Piece of plasterboard and some batten cost less than a fiver.

Richard

The advantage of using an AVR as the switch for the video source... only need 1 cable (and the power) going into the screen itself and any new toys plug into the AVR and not the TV so no changes needed

Thanks a lot for all the replies, I have been considering my options and I think what I'm going to do is bury tubing into the wall.

With this:

Chasing Machine

It should make things a lot easier.

Using tubing will also allow me to put more cables in at a later date if needed.

Does anybody know where I could get some kind of rectangular conduit from ? probably about 50mm wide x 30mm deep.

Electrical wholesaler would be your best bet, mini trunking comes in a 50x38mm I think, (if not that exact size, somewhere near).

As for the chasing machine, I'd be inclined to just chase it out with a lump hammer and chisel as that machine will fill your entire house with dust, and I'm speaking from experience of using various machines for making various shapes and sizes of holes with dust extraction. It may take longer to d it manually but overall it will be quicker as you won't have to spend Months cleaning the entire contents of the house from top to bottom.

Yes I have done a lot of that before with a hammer and chisel though and it's just too hard work. I have a long way to chisel aswell because I'm going to have to put a power socket behind the TV.

I take it you have an office job by day then. Put some effort into it, or get someone in.

If you do decide that cleaning the entire house is an easier option, try and limit the dust by sealing all doors to the room you're working in and opening the windows!

Hehe, yeah I sit on a chair all day !

Yeah I'm going to cover everything up. The main thing I hate about hammer and chisel is the fact that it gives me huge blisters after a while.

I'm gonna start it tomorrow so I will let you all know how it goes and post some photos afterwards.

the bloke I've got coming to do mine is going to drill a hole behind the telly, drop all the cables down the cavity wall and out through another hole in the bottom. Lucky that all my AV equipment is in a cabinet right beneath where the telly will be

but then you've got the problem of hiding all those cables running to the AV receiver.

While he's at it, maybe he/you should insulate the wall too. Recover a few bob in saved heating costs.

Of course, if it's already full of foam, you might be in for a long night.

Surely the most cost effective and attractive method of hiding these cables and whatnot is using a vanity panel of some kind.

You've got to be careful if you enclose all your AV equipment in cupboards, etc., they do need to be ventillated properly.

An amp might sound better when it's warmed up, but you'd get better processing from digital equipment (like DVD/CD playerss and Media Centres, by keeping them as cool as possible.

Right I have finally finished it and I am pleased with the results.

Picture

Not bad, looks a bit dusty though.

Don't talk to me about dust !

I've had enough of dust the past few days

Given the choice again, I think I would have put up a false plasterboard wall and hidden the cables behind that.

But my DVD/ sky+/ ps2 etc are all in the same cabinate as my AVR so no visible cables there either

The only cable issue I have is with my turntable to my hifi as my hifi is wall mounted and you cant really wall mount a turntable