Hi All, I would like to fix an LCD tv to my chimney breast and cable it to the sky+ box which will be sited at the side of the breast. I intend to run the cables up into the loft area from the back of the tv and back down the wall at the side. My question is what is the best way to terminate the cables behind the tv in particular the scart lead? I want to avoid a hole in the wall with the socket sticking out. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks fredbare

the problem you have is bursting the lining of the chimney, you dont want smoke entering the living room

if there is plaster or gyproc then you can chisel out/ feed cable behind wall without going into the chimney.

if you dont use chimney drill into it, there might be a pipe for the fire so get a torch out and look up it

Hi Niall thanks for reply, probably didn't word it clearly - but I don't intend to break into the chimney. I will sink cable into plaster but would like to have a tidy outlet behind the tv.

IMO the neatest is to have a surface mounted wall box with an AV faceplate and regular power socket on it...

I guess the alternative is to run cable through the wall which exits through a grommet and then connects straight into the set, either using pre-made cables or soldering on plugs at the end yourself, however the risk here is that if the plug gets damaged it's then tricky to replace.

Sorry to highjack your thread, Fredbare, but I am also interested in a solution to this issue.

Like you I can get the wires to run behind the plaster, either up to the attic and then back down to the sky box, dvd etc, or down and round the chimney breast, but I am also uncertain what to do behind the tv for the scart connection. Mjk79, your suggestion would work for power and coax, but is there an equivalent for scart?

Duff

Of course

http://www.avrio.co.uk/acatalog/AV_Faceplates.html

You've got to bear in mind that you don't want the cable to start getting too long, it can deteriorate quite quickly over short distances.

do you really need a faceplate?

could you not use hdmi cable? its thin and just leave it coming out of wall, its behind telly so you wont see it

the way i did it was to drill small holes in the plaster board and tie a small socket to the end and then drop the socket inside the wall having first removed the skirting board and cutting a small hole below the skirting board height you fish out the socket then tie your cables to the string and pull back up, this works for the hdmi,ariel,power and component cables all of which had to be 5m long and werent cheap,you cut out a flush fit socket and wire up so the tv plugs straight in without having to chop the plug off invalidating the warranty then your tv bracket goes around it and its never seen then run your cables to the components behind the skirting boards (theres usually a gap between the plasterboard and the floor or simply cut a slot with a stanley knive to sit the cables in ) then refix the s/board back on taking care not to nail through the cables and you would never know it was any different a bit time consumeing but well worth it when its done

Remember, the longer the path, the weaker the signal! Why not just cut a channel in the chimney breast and lead the cable sideways to the sky box?

Mammals (specifically homo sapiens) have breasts.

Chimneys have brests (unless you're American, of course, but they are a confused bunch anyway!)

??

It's actually a hyphenated word: chimney-breast

(Ref: The Concise Oxford Dictionary)

Brest is a town in Brittany.........