Went out to a house today, 3 hours from our store, 2 million $ house on the lake, alot of $ for this area, cust had alarm guys do prewire for everything.
Wire for sat was stubbed out on north side of house, A-bus system on ,off, volume, thats all, 6 speakers on patio, all facing in none facing out towards private boat dock,
and yard (small problem, easy fix)
The worst thing was they ran 2 cat-5 from the HR to the Plasma location above the fire
place on purpose when they prewired it, because it was eaiser. No way to get any other wire to the plasma (two story house stacked rock) short of taking out rock. I got it to work with cat5 to rca balans, but I cant believe that they did this on purpose.
The only reason the customer came to us was for the TV's 50,55 plasmas, 42 LCD.
They didnt know we could do the "rest".
This is a lake house that wont be used except during the summer, money is not a problem. Shoiuld I leave it as it is, or suggest taking out rock to run the right wire, they probably wont see the diff unless I point it out to them.

What do you think.
just venting
thanks

Use converter boxes from a company such as Gefen, Audio Control, Key Digital, etc. that will allow composite, component, and even HDMI (needs both the Cat5s). At least the Cat5s are better than a single coax and the customer asks for HD!

use the key digital product and your good to go.

Can also get baluns from MuxLabs, which incidentally, you can get at A#I. Used to get them at A&*D, but I can get them cheaper at A%I.
Just be thankful they prewired that much. When I have done takeover jobs, you never know what they pulled.

Maybe somebody could explain to me why one of my competitors pulls 3 cat 5 for high def. He pulls 1 red cat 5, 1 blue cat 5, and 1 green cat 5. Then he trims out his plates with corresponding color coded cat 5 keystones. These are spec homes. If I was pulling cat5 for high def (which I would only do in a pinch, otherwise, I pull an RGB Mini), I would only pull 2 cat 5's at the most and leave them in the wall to sell as an upgrade.

I've gotten into the habit of running more and more cat 5's to video locations.....esp if they are long runs. I pull at leas three so that I can run HDMI on cat5 as I understand that Baluns for HDMI use 2 cat5's. Have yet to use them though. Sure is nice to know that they are there if you need them.

the red, green, blue cat 5 thing is probably so that he can use a simple one channel balun from Muxlab or the like for each color. These one channel baluns only use two of the eight conductors in cat5, so perhaps he is pulling two conductors from each cat5 and putting them into the red, green, and blue keystones

You can also use the additional cat5 for IR if need be.

The Cat 5 to HDMI adapters I have seen require one of the two Cat 5's to be shielded.

Careful coz CAT 5 to HDMI adapters sometimes can't pass the copy protection!

I found out the hard way last week. Ended up ripping out the HDMI and going with component. Didn't really notice a difference in picture quality anyway. Has anyone else or are my eyes just gettin old?

...Or line level audio (again with baluns)...
You can go up to about 500 feet with cat5 and good baluns with very minor signal loss... and the signal can also be pumped up if needed... A nice back-up technology to mini component cables.

Leave it.

Doesn't everyone pull "color coded wiring" on their jobs?


All the cabling is pulled with various color coding on our jobs. Security wiring is color coded, audio wiring is color coded, data wiring is color coded, etc, etc.

And anywhere that access is an issue, there is extra wiring in place. Takes no longer to rough yet makes the trim out go a much faster......

Could this be the reason for the above?

Possibly, but why pull 3 cat 5's and waste 3 cat5 keystones in the process? And it would seem to me to be the most expensive way to use baluns.
I agree that color coding your cabling topology is the smart way to go, as we do that as well. We use different colored cables for security to identify windows, doors, motions, etc. We also do the same for structured wiring as well. Then you can blast through the trims too.

I did some remote-only work for an installer who had prewired, then finished, a system with CAT5 and Gefen HDMI converters. This is the installation that made me start the thread asking "HDMI Experts" what the deal was, because switching HDMI inputs changed the channel on the cable box to zero. I told the installer that I wasn't wiring for HDMI yet because it was still too buggy.

Now, five months later, he is going back to convert to component because of repeated strange HDMI failures. Thank goodness the same wires can be used. I still think it is too early. What if I charge my client to run two or three CAT5s and the industry finally figures out that the only way to get baluns to work with CAT5 is with all shielded CAT5? I can't reliably wire today for the eventual HDMI answer.