[mike_b]

Evening All

We're just about to go ahead and get a new kitchen put in, it's involving taking a couple of walls out, so will need a lot of replastering, and I'm wondering what AV equipment wiring I should consider hiding in the walls whilst it's all in a mess.

We'll be putting a small flat screen tv on the wall, it'd be good to be able to get on the net, access i tunes or similar on a different home PC (thinking some sort of home network), then maybe have some integrated speakers in the ceiling (it's coming down anyway). At the least then I'll need speaker cable from the tv up to the speakers, and an aerial connection. Or should I be looking at using a tv card in the main pc. Is using ethernet a good idea or is that a bit old hat now?

We do already have wireless in the house, not sure if this might help.

Anyone got anything trick installed that might give me some good ideas?

Mike

 

[AndyMk2]

This is a kitchen right, not a lounge?

I guess it would be a good idea if you watch a lot of cookery programmes though

 

[GaryR]

The last kitchen I fit out, I put a 24" monitor into the wall. It became the central hub of the home for email / recipes / online news. It really worked. But because you were generally standing it didn't consume the time with the distractions you get from every day web use. Go for it....

 

[kNeo_gHau]

Have a look in to the O2 Joggler. ?50 from O2 at the moment, can be hacked easily to run the netbook version of Ubuntu... I think i'm going to get one cause it looks awesome really

 

[Daddy Cool]

If shes got time to watch telly and surf the web, shes not making your dinner quick enough.

 

[mike_b]

If shes got time to watch telly and surf the web, shes not making your dinner quick enough.

True enough. On the odd occasion I have to make tea like tonight I was running between the lounge and the kitchen turning sausages and watching the top gear vietnam special program. Bit annoying.

We're going for an open plan kitchen / diner, so we'll probably end up spending a lot of time in there, more than in the lounge. I've been having a looksee online, avforums.com has been useful. I'm thinking maybe a squeezebox, plus a media server somewhere upstairs. TV needs to be able to "talk" to the pc somehow to run tinternet. Think maybe a mini pc of some sorts might be the way forward. But not sure... Hmmmn

GaryR - that's kind of what I'm thinking, but as we'll have a breakfast bar I can see myself spending quite a bit of time in there!

I know this may all sound a bit ott, but we're going to be here for the next 10 years I guess, so trying to future proof while I can!

 

[poopipe]

Have a look in to the O2 Joggler. £50 from O2 at the moment, can be hacked easily to run the netbook version of Ubuntu... I think i'm going to get one cause it looks awesome really

o rly?

I was going to buy one until i noted the absence of a browser

 

[URN]

Evening All

We're just about to go ahead and get a new kitchen put in, it's involving taking a couple of walls out, so will need a lot of replastering, and I'm wondering what AV equipment wiring I should consider hiding in the walls whilst it's all in a mess.

We'll be putting a small flat screen tv on the wall, it'd be good to be able to get on the net, access i tunes or similar on a different home PC (thinking some sort of home network), then maybe have some integrated speakers in the ceiling (it's coming down anyway). At the least then I'll need speaker cable from the tv up to the speakers, and an aerial connection. Or should I be looking at using a tv card in the main pc. Is using ethernet a good idea or is that a bit old hat now?

We do already have wireless in the house, not sure if this might help.

Anyone got anything trick installed that might give me some good ideas?

Mike

Logitech Squeezebox

 

[Zeo]

i cant suggest anything on the whole kitchen front but pc wise i would always choose a longer ethernet cable over wireless so if possible i would choose to do that!

 

[Tangoman]

i cant suggest anything on the whole kitchen front but pc wise i would always choose a longer ethernet cable over wireless so if possible i would choose to do that!

As Zeo says, ethernet will give you consistent transfer rates of 100mb per second, wireless at best will be 54mb per second (although that's unlikely to happen) therefore video streaming will be much smoother over ethernet.

 

[waveydavey]

i cant suggest anything on the whole kitchen front but pc wise i would always choose a longer ethernet cable over wireless so if possible i would choose to do that!

If the OP, or anyone else out there in Nutzer land is interested, I've got a ma-hoo-sive long ethernet cable up in my loft which you can have for nowt if you're interested. Must be at least 10 metres long, maybe more, but I would need to check.

If you can use it, feel free to PM me your address and I'll bung it in the post (in the interest of fairness, mike_b can have first dibs, then it's open to anyone else if he doesn't want it)

 

[fr3n2y]

What about those plug adaptors that use your house wiring for home networking?

 

[Salgar]

What about those plug adaptors that use your house wiring for home networking?

No, they're okay if you're in a really tricky situation, but if you're redoing your house, it's always worth getting ethernet cables stuck in to the walls. If you get some good cat 5e or cat6 cable it'll last longer than the microwave.

It really depends what you want in the kitchen? If you just want music/radio then a squeezebox will do nicely, but if you actually want to browse the internet etc, then something like a mac mini could connect to the tv and you could have a wireless keyboard/mouse/trackball to control it all. If you're against macs, you could find the equivalent small pc. Alternatively, you could just buy a netbook and keep it in the kitchen and have connections for sound/screen somewhere in the wall. That way you could plug any pc/ipod/etc into the speakers in the ceiling.

Either way, sounds like fun.

 

[Daddy Cool]

On the odd occasion I have to make tea like tonight I was running between the lounge and the kitchen turning sausages and watching the top gear vietnam special program.

Man, thats repeated on Dave almost every night!

 

[Don]

On the odd occasion I have to make tea like tonight I was running between the lounge and the kitchen turning sausages and watching the top gear vietnam special program.

Man, thats repeated on Dave almost every night!

[/quote]
If only someone would invest some sort of recording device which could allow people to watch things at their convenience

My tuppence-worth here is to make sure you put decent size conduit pipes in the walls so you can upgrade cables easily or add in other things if the fancy takes you. The technology which seems fab just now will seem slow and outdated in a few years time. Narrow conduit is a pain.

Get some pics up when it's finished

 

[mike_b]

Thanks for the responses folks, I've had a bit more of a read up, and spoken to a mate who's into all this stuff, and I'm still thinking about it! I'm definately going to need ethernet cable, so thanks for the offer waveydavey - I will send you pm! A squeezebox isn't quite going to do all I want it to, so going to have to do a bit more than that!

I'll certainly stick some pics up when it's done (should probably post some before shots too so you can see how nasty the current kitchen is) and post up again when I've decided what I'm going to go for.

Cheers

 

[waveydavey]

PM sent matey, I'll pop the cable in the post to you tomorrow

 

[waveydavey]

My estimate of 10m for the ethernet cable was a bit low - it's actually 25m

 

[mike_b]

Just thought I'd update this thread as my kitchen has been ripped out, and we are 1 week into the work. I've pretty much decided on all my AV equipment, so will give a quick run down of what and why, plus put up a pic of how nasty it was last week! Firstly though, thanks to Dave, got the cable, and have worked out the route for it today

So, we're having a stud wall built on the back of the chimney breast, and sinking the TV into it. I went for a 26" Samsung LE26B450C4 because it got good write ups on What Hi-Fi! Not actually seen a pic on one, but it's hard to tell which are good / poor in the shop as they have such variable inputs. Review here: http://whathifi.com/Review/Samsung-LE26B450/

Next up, speakers. Flat screen TVs are notoriousfor having rubbish inbuilt speakers, and since I want to play radio / music at a good quality, I've gone for a 2.1 Acoustic Energy system, the sub will go on top of the units, and the speakers next to the TV in the wall recess. So audio and visual done. Here are the speakers, but not getting them from Amazon. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acoustic-Energy-AE26-06B-active-speaker/dp/B000MN96T6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1272822089&sr=8-2-catcorr

Networking. The PC upstairs is becoming the main media server in the house thanks to an application called TVersity. I can now connect to that via the PS3 downstairs, and access all music pictures etc, which is cool! I'm going to get a cheap laptop or desktop PC to go in a cupboard in the kitchen, then connect this via HDMI / PC cable to the TV, then to my router to get access to all the media upstairs, and have internet surfing ability on the kitchen TV.

Hopefully it's going to be the mutz nutz. I think I'm getting what I was looking for. I went off the idea of the ceiling speakers as they needed a seperate amp, I get round this with the AE speakers. Should be able to control them with the tv volume which is good.

Hopefully it'll all be sorted in about 3 weeks - which given how the kitchen looks now is amazing. Got some good builders on it!