Installing an HDMI cable from front to rear

[Bill WA6YBD]

Hi All,

Last weekend I installed the used non functional Winegard Traveler HD Satellite antenna I purchased and fixed. After getting all that working I had HD to the new 32" Vizio TV up front but not to the new 26" LED LCD in the bedroom. The solution would be to run an HDMI cable to the bedroom. I have read where others installed an HDMI cable by running down the windshield column and through all the outside compartments and up through the floor and into the cabinet below the TV. That works of course but I think I found a easier way perhaps better as you can get by with a 50 foot cable. The solution I came up with was to run the cable in the air conditioning ducts in the ceiling. It is really easier than you might think. Here are the steps I followed.

· Remove the AC vent covers in the bed room and over the pilots chair.
· Using a electricians fish tape push it in at either end. I started in the bedroom.
· Attach the HDMI cable to the fish and pull it in leaving the ends hanging out at both ends.
· Remove the florescent light in front of the TV.
· Drill a 7/8" hole between the cavity for the light and the air conditioning duct. The size of the hole may very due to the size of the connectors on the cable. It is only about 2" to get a chase between the two.
· Fish the cable into the cavity for the light.
· Fish the HDMI cable into the cavity where the old TV used to be. In my case there were two big chases where other cables were running and the HDMI cable dropped into the area in the ceiling where the old TV used to sit. From there with the center plastic cover under the old TV removed you can run the cable into the entertainment area.
· Move on the bedroom.
· In my case I needed to get from the air conditioning to the wardrobe cabinet. I accomplished this by removing the sliding door, the door track and a wood spacer.
· I drilled a 7/8" up through the ceiling in line and into the air conditioning duct then fished the HDMI cable down into the bedroom. There is a thin piece of steel above the sliding door that the door hardware attaches to. No big deal, my hole saw went right through it.
· Drill a 7/8" hole in the side of the wardrobe near the top and fish the wire into the cabinet.
· Drill additional holes to get the cable across the additional cabinets and finally to the TV.
· Fasten the cable just behind the front of the cabinets using cable clamps.
· I cut a slot into the wood spacer to make a channel for the cable can sit in and allow the wood spacer to fit up against the ceiling before reinstalling it.
· Reinstall the all the sliding door hardware being careful not to put a screw through the newly installed cable.
· Reinstall all hardware.

I used HDMI auto select switch from my satellite receiver and DVD player that feeds a 2 way amplified splitter that feeds the 2 TV's. Both sets works perfectly.

~Bill

[RickO]

Great post... and an even better job!

I'm one of those who ran the HDMI cable from my mid ship entertainment system to the 32" Sony in the bedroom and routed it down through the floor... along the chassis with the various wire harnesses... and back up through the floor to the TV. In my case the receiver and the bedroom tv were each located in different slides.

Are either your receiver or bedroom TV located in a slide?

Thanks again for sharing such a well documented project.

Rick

[Vegasdan]

My installer did the same thing. A neat and tidy installation.

[Rick 2005 Dolphin 5376]

Very clever install. A slingbox would do the same thing with out wires though.

[RickO]

Originally Posted by Rick 2005 Dolphin 5376

Very clever install. A slingbox would do the same thing with out wires though.

That is a good point. Will a Slingbox carry HD signals?

Rick

[Rick 2005 Dolphin 5376]

Yes it will
Slingbox.com - Slingbox PRO-HD

[Bill WA6YBD]

Hi All,
RIckO, Neither of my TV's are on slides. I bet that a bit of complexity to the installation. Nothing wrong with installing wires in the basement. Most of the wiring for my ham radios is located in the basement.
Rick, To be honest I did not consider wireless and being a ham radio operator you would think that would have been my first choice. I did a little research on SlingBox after reading your post and was quite confused by a lot of misinformation. I found a YouTube that was informative but I was not able to nail down current prices. For a Sling Pro HD + Sling Catcher Amazon wanted $1200.00. That isn't happening! To go totally wireless they said it requires a Sling Catcher $300.00, another web site said they were being discontinued and being sold by Best Buy for $100.00. And then, the people who are using them, swear by them. One thing that would have turned me off is the sling box uses component video only, no HDMI. That would mean 5 additional cables (3 video + 2 audio) to be connected whenever I moved the sat receiver from the house to the MH. And perhaps the biggest reason I would not go wireless is it requires another stage of digital compression and encoding. HDMI does not require any additional compression or encoding, the MPEG-4 compression on the satellite is bad enough. I did find a 5.8GHz HD RF link model # WHD 5001 with HDMI capability and it sold for $250.00. But again, it requires additional compression and encoding. My system also switches between the DVD player and satellite using a HDMI auto switch and only one cable to the rear TV. The total cost on my installation was approximately $50.00 plus some labor. I could have done the job for less but I added an amplifier to help with the long cable run. Turns out the system ran just fine without it but I left it inline just in case.
Time for football. ~Bill

[2Labs]

Originally Posted by Rick 2005 Dolphin 5376

Very clever install. A slingbox would do the same thing with out wires though.

A slingbox would work .. but not without using a PC, SmartPhone or other device to feed the slingbox signal to the bedroom TV, plus as the OP noted, a wireless network inside the coach to stream over and connect to.

We have a couple of Slingbox Pro HD units setup at our bricks-n-sticks and use them pretty regularly to watch TV while on the road. The slingbox connects between your cable/sat receiver and the TV. It then takes the signal coming out of the receiver and streams it over an internet connection (wired or wireless) before/as the signal heads out to the connected TV.

On the client side we use either our laptops, ipods or Samsung Andriod Smartphones to view the streaming signal. If we want to watch the slingbox stream on one of the TV's in our motorhome, we utilize the HDMI out connector on our laptop or smartphone to feed that streamed signal to the TV.

We really like our Slingboxes. Yes, the picture is not as pixel perfect as watching a direct Over-the-Air or Cable/Sat signal, but being able to watch TV anywhere and mostly at any time - provided we have a wireless or internet connection - is really great! The DW likes to use it while we're travelling and can usually be found watching TV on her SmartPhone or laptop while we're on the road. We've had success with using our Verizon 4G Smartphones, Verizon 3G MiFi's and home/campground wireless connections to watch our Slingboxes.

With the slingbox we get full control over our cable boxes at home so we can record programs on the DVR and watch live TV or recorded programs. The downside to the Slingbox - you can't watch one program on the outbound stream and a different program on the TV connected to the Slingbox. This isn't typically a big problem unless we're using the stream and someone at home wants to watch TV.

*Note: The Slingbox HD does have a built in tuner so that the connected TV *could* watch a different channel from what is being streamed, but as it's just a coax input, all you're going to be able to receive on that side is the unscrambled signals from your provider and if your provider is FIOS, then you'll need a separate receiver to feed the coax in.

[zzjea]

At home I use a wireless HDMI transmitter and receiver to add another LCD in another room that can receive and control the Sat Dish receiver. Works perfectly.

If I needed to put my LCD at the rear of the main room in the coach, all I would have to do is unplug the 2 devices from the house location and move them to the MH. The transmitter is hooked up to my Dish Sat receiver in the MH and the transmitter is hooked up to the TV in the MH, anywhere I want it.

I even had this work when the MH was parked in the driveway and I moved the HDMI receiver from the master bedroom in the house, out to the MH and hooked it up to the TV there and walla, we had Satellite reception from the Dish receiver in the house that is connected to the dish on the roof of the house. It was a good 40' and a lot of brick and walls in between.

Also, this solution was ~$200, not $300 with a Slingbox. And no MH modifications at all.

John