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The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Installation

Installing a good high definition TV system is a major project and requires some planning. I saw a Christmas commercial recently in which a woman decided to surprise her husband by buying him an HDTV. A store assistant maneuvered a good sized LCD display in its box into the back of her SUV, all smiles. In the next scene, it’s Christmas morning and a cover is pulled off the LCD HDTV, showing it installed on the wall. No wires. No speakers. No amplifier. No mussed hair.

Such a fantasy appears only in TV commercials.

In practice, an installation has three phases, and if you trip up here, expensive mistakes can be made. First is selecting the supplier(s). Second is the actual setup, and that can be a function of who you buy the system from. Finally, if you make it a DIY project, you’ll have to decide if it’ll be a one day push or a phased in affair.

Just as one wouldn’t write 100,000 lines of code before trying a compile, one wouldn’t expect everything to go right when thousands of dollars worth of new equipment is set up, perhaps all from different manufacturers, and with all kinds of new cables.

Also, depending on the equipment you choose, you may need a phone line, Ethernet and new coaxial cable. I’d also recommend using two separate power outlets, each rated at 20 amps, on different circuits.

Infrastructure

Coaxial Cable. Recently built homes should have had RJ-6 coaxial cable installed. Left over from earlier times or make-do wiring may have used RG-59. The difference is easy to see and feel. RG-59 has a thin center post that’s easy to bend. RG-6 has a much thicker, stronger center post and will do better with the HDTV signal. If you own your own home, it’s worth doing some investigation to make sure you have RG-6 from your outside source to the point where you’ll install the HDTV. You’ll also need to buy some new RG-6 in 3 or 5 ft. lengths to connect to the wall outlet, the set top box, and so on. If you’re in an apartment, you’ll be stuck with whatever came before you. Hopefully, that’s also RG-6.

Phone. Sometimes the placement of the TV isn’t in sync with the phone jacks in the room. An easy way to add a phone line is with the RTX Dual Jack, available from Amazon. It uses a radio link instead of the electrical wiring to create an extension and is a breeze to set up. Even so, it still requires an electrical outlet. Those units that use the electrical wiring to transmit the signal have received terrible reviews. I have an RTX Dual Jack, and it works beautifully.

Ethernet. Many modern components, such as AV receivers, HD disc players and set top boxes have Ethernet and phone connections. The advantage of using a phone line is for security -- you keep these devices off your home network. On the other hand, if you want more speed for firmware updates or the receiver to be able to access Internet radio, you’ll need Ethernet. (It’s a must for an HD TiVo system.) If you’ve provided an Ethernet jack near the HDTV that goes back to your home router+switch, it’s possible to also add a small four port gigabit switch to put behind the components. Instructions with these small, remote switches show how to set it up.

If you need to provide Ethernet by snaking a line through the walls, I’d get help from an electrician who does this for a living. He’ll know all the tricks when it comes to passing wires through studs, isolation from 110V wiring, and creating a good looking wall jack. I’d avoid cable laying on the floor. That is unless your home router is close by ... or you’re a bachelor.

Vendors

There are several ways to acquire your equipment.

1. Local A/V Specialty Shop. Large cities will often have specialty audio video shops. These are the ones with the big demo rooms, couches, monster speakers, and a staff of experts who know quite a bit about audio and video. Denver, for example, has Cherry Creek Audio and ListenUp. You can go in, sit on a couch in front of a demo $30K home theater and describe what you want to do and your budget. They’ll assign a sales rep., design a system, draw up a wiring diagram, certify that the components all work right together, order the equipment, come to your house, install the whole thing, calibrate the audio and video and then train you.

The advantage here is that everything is all done for you, including the heavy lifting. The disadvantage is that you’ll easily incur a $1,000 cost for this service, and you’ll pay retail for the components.

2. Mail order specialty shops. These organizations work via mail order but they offer special services. Two that are notable and customers have found to be highly trustworthy are Crutchfield and Vanns. If your TV arrives damaged, they make it especially easy to get it replaced. You can also ask them to arrange for a local professional installer to set up the system and also do the audio and video calibration.

These companies will be fun to work with, but you’ll also pay full retail more or less for the components. They have sales consultants, but more of the burden will be on you to design your system.

I referred to the audio and video calibration above. In terms of the video, it’s called ISF certification. Not all TVs have this, but when the more expensive ones do, it’s possible for a trained technician to properly adjust the TV in terms of all its video settings. (If you skip this, just remember that all HDTVs out of the box are in a very bright mode used for showrooms. At the very least, crank that down to "normal" or "cinema".) In terms of the audio, most modern A/V receivers on the mid to high end will come with a microphone. You step through a process of calibrating the room, and it sets the sound levels of all your speakers properly. This is more important than it sounds (!) because hard wood floors, lack of drapes, and openings in the room can affect the quality of the surroundsound at your sitting position.

3. Mail order discount. This is a good way to go for the smaller components. For the HDTV, for sizes under 32 inches, it’s also pretty hassle free. But when you buy a 50+ inch HDTV that weighs 100-150 lbs in its shipping container and something goes wrong with the delivery or the TV is damaged, it’s just not quite such a hassle-free affair. Amazon takes care of its customers well, and they sell boatloads of HDTVs. However, if you want more peace of mind, a TV that’s been checked out by a local dealer or one that’s hassle-free to replace via Crutchfield or Vanns may be better for you. You get what you pay for. Crutchfield and Vanns offer after sale consulation, so if you have a problem, you just pick up the phone and chat with a consultant. Oodles of peace of mind...

4. Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. These electronics chains are the bread and butter of HDTV. For one fee, they’ll deliver a big HDTV. For more, they’ll put together a nice $200 entertainment center with smoked glass shelves. For even more, they’ll bring everything out, set it all up, and produce a functioning system. At the top, this could cost you an extra $500. (ISF certification will be additional.)

One caveat: they’ll probably try to sell you on expensive cables to add a little more profit. You’ll likely be better off ordering your own cables from Gefen or ExtremeMac. Capable 3 ft. HDMI, component and digital audio cables are available in the $20 to $40 range. I know it’s a hot topic, full of FUD. But I’m using ExtremeMac HDMI cables, and they’re working nicely. A good rule of thumb is to use these mid-range cables until you identify a problem. Then and only then upgrade to solve a problem.

Installation

If you are not technically deep on HDTV, or you’re buying this system as a surprise Christmas present, having the system installed and paying extra is worth the time and aggravation. If you’re paying by the hour, expect it to take two to four hours from the time the equipment arrives until the last zip tie is pulled and you’re watching high definition TV.

One thing I’ve learned is that I do this kind of thing every five or ten years. The installers do it every day. Professional installers stopped making amateur mistakes years ago. You’ll make many of them on your first try.

If mounting a flat panel TV to dry wall, it’s especially important that a professional installer do it. You DO NOT want to make a mistake here, and have huge chunks of drywall come crashing down with a 140 lb 60-inch Plasma that is thereby destroyed.

If you do the installation yourself, do NOT lay the flat TVs horizontally on a dining room table or the floor. They’re shipped vertically upright and should stay that way throughout the installation. The danger here is that you’ll accidentally step on it while on the floor or apply pressures that will damage the very large sheets of glass. Of course, a rear projection TV always stands upright.

Get the manufacturer’s manuals and add up all the power for all the components. To be safe, I’d suggest you have no more than 15 amps, 1650 watts assigned to any one outlet, and that’s a lot. If you can, break it all up and use two outlets. Invest $50 on a very solid, quality multi-port surge protector at each outlet. Don’t skimp on this.

Lock the cats and dogs in the basement and send the kids to the movies during the installation, whether you do it yourself or have an installer do it.

You and a companion could do the whole thing on a Saturday. (That’s why I advise a wiring diagram. You’ll know what cables to buy ahead of time.) However, if you want to take a more leisurely, systematic approach, you could conduct a phased migration as I did. Here’s how I did it.

A Gentle Migration

Phase 1. After I decided to stay with DIRECTV because of the number and quality of the HD channel offerings, I called DIRECTV and had them install the five LNB HD dish. I pulled out my old ReplayTV, relegated it to the bedroom, and the installer put an HR-20 in its place. The HR-20 is an integrated HD set top box and HD DVR, and it has worked well. Having the HD source set up prior to the big installation day is a must.

At this point, nothing else changed. I ran the S-video cable out of the HR-20 into my old Sony rear projection 41-inch SDTV. Let me tell you, HD television, downscaled to S-Video and fed into a quality SDTV on 480i, is stunning. At this point, I had time to learn all about my new DVR.

Phase 2. Since HDTV delivers Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, I started replacing all my RCA (red and white) analog cables with coaxial and optical digital audio cables. (My DVD player uses coaxial and the HR-20 uses optical.) Again, everything worked fine, and I had the two front channels delivering Dolby sound to my left and right speakers. If anything had gone wrong, I could easily backtrack, and I was working on sound only which would isolate any problems to audio.

Phase 3. Next, the new HDTV arrived. It was shipped from Illinois by motor freight and, fortunately, worked perfectly. A friend of mine and I set up a new TV stand, one with a pier on the back that suspends a Plasma in mid-air safely. I highly recommend one of these Whalen TV stands, available from, for example, Best Buy, because you don’t want a child or 80 pound dog knocking over a 100 pound LCD or Plasma where it will shatter and possibly harm a family member or pet. The HDTVs have stable tripod stands, but Murphy’s Law applies here.

It took us four hours to move the old TV, tear down the old system and assemble the stand. It took another 30 min to connect just the basic components to check out the TV. I continued to use my old A/V receiver with component video inputs and outputs. The two front speakers stayed put.

Phase 4. The next step was to add a center speaker and move the old bookshelf speakers to the back, making room for new speakers in the front. That completed the five speaker set up without a subwoofer -- which I may install some day in the future.

Phase 5. The final step was to swap out the old A/V receiver with the new one that has a scaler for analog inputs, redirection to HDMI and HDMI switching. Again, because this was small change, there was little risk. I’d been watching HDTV with component cables for a few weeks, and I had that as a fall back if the HDMI connection had issues.

It turned out that the ExtremeMac HDMI cables worked fine, and in the process, I ended up with the facility to use either component or HDMI and compare the two to make sure the HDMI cables were adequate. Also, I prefer the look of DVDs upconverted from 480i and sent via component instead of HDMI. It’s just me.

I’m keeping my 480i DVD player, which has component video out and digital audio out, until the HD disc war comes to some kind of sensible resolution. As discussed elsewhere, DVDs, upscaled to HD look pretty good, and the gulf between SDTV and HDTV is much greater than the gulf between, say, DVD and HD DVD.

Finally -- Gasp! -- It’s Done

Now you have a roadmap. You know what you’re facing in terms of the various HDTV components, audio, video, their selection, technical issues, vendors and installation. It shouldn’t be this hard, but it ain’t like dustin’ crops kid -- as Han Solo said. However, with this guide, some preparation, a wiring diagram, some help from a friend or spouse, you’ll end up being quite proud of the system. And you’ll wonder how you ever watched SDTV. In the last installment, we’ll look at some sample systems.


Here are the links to all six articles in the series.

Nov 7th:The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Introduction

Nov 13th: The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Display Selection

Nov 16th: The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Audio Selection

Nov 29th: The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Source Selection

Dec 6th: The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Installation

Dec 14th: The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Sample Systems

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