Category Archives: Audio Visual Advice

How to get cables past a timber nogging when wall mounting your LCD TV

How to get cables past a timber noggings when wall mounting your LCD TV

There are a hand full of TV cables which are left exposed once mounting a TV onto a wall, these cables consist of power cable, coax antenna cable, HDMI cables & RCA cables. Often my customers choose the option of hiding all of their TV and media units cables through the wall as having them exposed is unsightly.

Today I’m going to show you how to get cables past a timber nogging when wall mounting your LCD TV onto the wall to achieve a clean professional look.

In a common TV Wall mounting situation, the timber noggings are normally 450mm or 600mm apart.   They are normally then halfway up the wall between the floor and ceiling.

Below is a diagram showing the timber studs which the tv wall bracket will be crewed to and the timber noggins which can prevent the cables being threaded through the wall.

wall mounting northern beaches

 

Once we are ready to Mount the TV to the wall, we have to drill a hole in the timber nogging to pass the cables through.   To achieve this, we have to cut a hole in the gyprock to expose the timber to gain access to drill the hole.

Below is the step by step guide on how to hide the cables when mounting a TV wall bracket (power cable, coax antenna cable, HDMI cables & RCA cables) through the wall.

Step 1 

During a TV installation job where I am mounting a TV to a wall and concealing the TV cables, I use masking take to mark out the timber studs and noggings behind the gyprock wall.

wall mounting northern beaches

 

Step 2

Using a high quality stud finder I have accurately found the studs and noggings

wall mounting northern beaches

Step 3

I have now marked out the flap that I need to cut out.

wall mounting northern beaches

Step 4

Here is an example of how I have cut the flap and exposed the timber nogging

wall mounting northern beaches

Step 5

Using a 32mm drill bit I then proceed drilling through the timber.

wall mounting northern beaches

Step 6

The hole is now drilled and I can thread the TV cables through

wall mounting northern beaches

Step 7

During this stage of the TV installation, the TV cables can now be threaded through

wall mounting northern beaches

Step 8

Now I carefully close the flap back down to patch up the hole which has been created.

wall mounting northern beaches

Step 9

The patch has now been sanded and painted over.

wall mounting northern beaches

Overall I think it comes up well with little or no indication that we have cut into the wall.

If you would like your tv wall mounted contact Peter from That TV Guy on 0401 202 087. 

Peter has been doing tv setups, installations and wall mounting in the Northern Beaches Sydney and North Shore Sydney for the last 14 years.

tv installer northern beaches & north shore

 

Which wall mounting bracket do I choose for my 40″ TV

Which wall mounting bracket do I choose for my 40″ TV

 

As tv’s are getting larger and thinner these days most people want to wall mount their new fancy tv onto the wall.   A common question I get asked is can you explain the difference between the wall brackets.

There are basically 2 types; fixed/tilt and full motion.

Fixed / tilt

Which wall mounting bracket do I choose for my 40" TV

This type of bracket is so the tv fits flat to the wall.   They can move up and down about 15 degrees, but not side to side.   The maximum weight for these is about 60 kg.

Which wall mounting bracket do I choose for my 40 TV2

Full motion

Which wall mounting bracket do I choose for my 40" TV

Full motion brackets mean the tv can move up and down the 15 degrees, and moves from left to right.  The distance from the wall ranges from 115mm to 515mm. The maximum TV weight capacity is 60kg.

Which wall mounting bracket do I choose for my 40 TV

 

For more information about wall mounting your tv give Peter from That TV Guy a call on 0401 202 087.

Peter services the Northern Beaches and North Shore Sydney.

tv installation northern beaches north shore Sydney

 

 

 

Worst television technologies

Worst television technologies

HD has been around for 15-odd years, and during that time TV makers have introduced numerous technologies and extras to try to get you to buy a new tv. Here my least favourite.

The HDTV market is now fully mature. Just about everybody owns at least one, and often three or four. For the most part we’re happy with our high-definition televisions, but that doesn’t mean we get the best picture available or use the extras and doo-dads we paid for.

Presented below, in no particular order, are the HDTV technologies I consider largely useless, unhelpful and even downright harmful to picture quality. Most of them seem to exist merely to fill out an already overstuffed features list, however, so they’ll be with us for awhile longer.

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3D

Almost nobody uses the 3D feature on their TVs, even if they happen to own the glasses. Most people use it once then don’t bother to use it again. It’s such a well-known flop that Toshiba have dropped it entirely. I wouldn’t be surprised to see other TV makers do the same soon.

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Curved screens

Curved TVs are a gimmick, at least at their current incarnations of sizes and seating distances. When i have viewed them I count even notice any difference . And the kicker is that curved LED TVs cost significantly more than flat ones.

 

4K

What’s wrong with extra resolution, you ask? First off, it’s almost impossible to discern the difference between HD and 4K at standard seating distances. But even worse, spending bandwidth and bits on that extra resolution means there’s less to devote to things that actually improve picture quality.

 

LCD

LCD is the most successful HDTV display technology, killing off CRT, rear-projection and now plasma, and pushing OLED further down the road. But LCD and “LED TVs” generally offer worse picture quality than plasma or OLED. They suffer insurmountable off-angle issues and require convoluted, often flawed local dimming and video-processing schemes to produce a decent picture. Too bad there’s no real alternative right now.

 

Edge-lit LED

These sets sell like gangbusters thanks to their slim profiles, but most have worse picture uniformity, including brighter edges and corners, than direct-lit LED-based LCD TVs.

 

Soap-opera effect

The artificial smoothing introduced by many TVs can usually be turned off, but in most models it’s on by default. In addition to making films look like they were shot with camcorders, it can introduce artifacts like blurring and haloing.

 

Glossy screens

Can you shave by the reflection of your TV screen? Then a window or lamp in your room is likely to be a bright distraction. Many such shiny screens do improve contrast, but compared to matte versions they don’t perform as well overall in bright rooms. But they do sell better on the showroom floor, proving once again that people like shiny things.

 

HDCP copy protection

Designed to prevent piracy (previously Macrovision), HDCP’s only real effect is to inconvenience users who all-too-often encounter blank or snowy screens as the result of a failed “handshake.” And it’s not going away anytime soon.

 

Bloated smart TV suites

Cruddy games, lame apps you’ll never use and sub-par Web browsers litter the oft-overcrowded interfaces of many of today’s smart TVs. In most cases you’ll just ignore them, but sometimes they impede access to the services you’ll actually use, such as Netflix, ABC iView and SBS on Demand. Especially compared to Apple TV, most smart TVs can offer too much crap!

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Voice and gesture control

Talking and waving to your TV might seem like a revolution worthy of “Minority Report,” but the reality is you’ll almost never use these features either. Clicking a button on a remote is almost always going to be a better way to get things done, and with smart predictive text, even keyword searches are usually easier via virtual keyboards than via voice.

Sourced- cnet

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Audio buying guide and set up

Audio buying guide and set up

An incomplete and ever-expanding list of basic buying, setups and usage tips along with some insight into hardware specifics and which numbers actually matter when buying audio equipment.

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1. Don’t Buy Audio Equipment from TV Manufacturers – 99% of the time a company like Sony, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, etc don’t invest their profits back into their audio lineup. They R&D tv’s and phones and answering machines and audio gets very little love. Sony is the only brand that has passable headphones and peripherals.(Don’t buy their amps!). This is a general rule and easy to remember.

2. Ignore Wattage on Both Speakers and Amplifiers – MOSTLY Only on the rarest occasion will wattage actually play a part in getting the most out of your setup. On average no more than 10-15 watts is used to play even the largest floor-standing speakers and since wattage is logarithmic gain where you need to at least double it to have even a 3db bump. That said you never want to drive an amplifier at full tilt, ever. If you find yourself doing this you may need a bigger amp or more efficient speakers.

Speaker Efficiency is usually written as the value Sensitivity. It tells you how loud you can expect your speaker to get and is measured with 1 watt of power from 1 meter away. Higher than 90db is considered very efficient, lower than 90 isn’t and means your speakers are hard to drive loud.

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3. Placement is Everything – Even the cheapest logitech 2.0 or samsung HTiB speakers can be improved if you simply place them in the right spot. A good starting point for Stereo 2.0 is this for 2.1 the same rules apply only you need to consider sub placement. A 5.1 setup works best like this and a full 7.1 expands on that to look like this. Keeping everything at ear height or slightly higher is always my recommendation. Want a Bit More Insanity?

 

4. The Room you are in Matters – This falls into the same category as the above rule. Placement around the listener is important but placing speakers in an all-Italian Marble bathroom is MORE important. Sound bounces. It hops skips and jumps all around you. This can be very very bad and ruin even the most impressive speakers. Huge empty room reverberate and hit you with the same sound 50 times in a fraction of a second. Fight this with carpets, Furniture and if needed seek out or DIY acoustical treatments which can make a BIG difference (note this video isn’t showing a very good or practical job)

 

5. Audition Speakers if you Can – Playing speakers on a shelf in a best buy doesn’t tell you a damned thing about how they are going to sound in your den, living room, on your desk or any place else. Higher end audio shops will usually allow you to test speakers in your own home before you flat out buy them. Other big retailers you may have to check return policies and purchase with the full intention of taking a set speakers back in a week. Any way you test be sure to listen to music you are familiar with so you know exactly how a set of speakers sounds compared to what you have heard previously. The radio or a demo CD you don’t know can cloud your judgement

 

6. Wireless is a Four Letter Word – Running wires for a rear channel or to get analog signals across a room can be awkward, difficult and sometimes ugly. BUT the audio benefits, cost savings and extra work will ALWAYS outweigh the… Well there aren’t any benefits going wireless. You see it is impossible. If you wanted wireless rear surround speakers you will at some point be plugging in a transmitter behind your AV equipment and then one or BOTH speakers to a wall outlet which has far more constraints than just hiding some 16ga zip cord along your moldings. You also have to deal with Audio encoding/decoding via wireless (digital low bandwidth or Analog and noisy) and amplification that will most certainly be sub-standard and housed inside the speaker or in a small plastic box. So you still have wires and you can’t customize the length and it will sound worse. Case Closed.

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7. Soundbars are a Very Bad Thing – Although Convenient and Sleek, A bar 40″ wide cannot perform as well as even two small bookshelves placed in a proper stereo position which will give far more presence and soundstage in comparison. The fact that the bar is usually made of plastic is a poor choice as I don’t know of any Violin’s, guitars or piano’s made from that material. A speaker is the same as any instrument and what it is made of matters. Now include an amplifier small enough to fit inside said bar and mount it flush against a wall with no breathing room and you will just start to scratch the surface as to why they are bad.

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8. Home Theater in a Box Systems Suck – First they are usually by those brands we discussed earlier (TV manufacturers). Second the receivers tend to be below the bottom of the line for even respectable audio companies (Onkyo). Lastly the speakers and subwoofer are the worst, cheap, high-fashion garbage and hold no love in this world for you or I. These setups also lack even basic features and inputs found on a run of the mill ~$250 entry level Standalone receiver and usually have very over-rated and dirty power (1,100 watts my ass) so changing to real speakers instead of the plastic garbage can damage both parties. If you want 5.1 and can’t afford a real one. Start with Stereo and move up. This post helps with that.

 

9. Don’t be Afraid to Buy Used – A $1,000 set of speakers/headphones/amplifiers bought brand new five years ago will still sound as good as $1,000 speakers/headphones/amplifiers but will cost a lot less! Most hardcore audio people like to try and experiment with as many different setups as they can and will buy new equipment once a year, two years, six months. Keep an eye out on craigslist, ebay, audiogon and /r/AVexchange for deals on speakers that might give you a leg up over what you can buy new. Don’t think that used means obsolete or broken, it is just used.

 

10. Distortion is the Enemy – A 1,000 watt amplifier means nothing if the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) of said amp isn’t listed or IS listed and is horrible. A high THD% means you can get metal out of your speakers when playing smooth jazz. A THD% should be posted on all decent amplification equipment and a value under 1% is acceptable (barely), under 0.5% is good and 0.1 is great (Note some ClassD Digital amps can maintain very low distortion at wattages under full and skyrocket to 10% at full power!)

 

11. Ohm’s (Ω) explained like you are 5 – Imagine twisting your speaker wire ends together with no speaker. That would be the equivalent of a 0Ω speaker connected to your amp. After doing that your amp would get toasty warm and catch fire. This is because all the power it is sending out it is getting right back.. and out and back and out and BOOM. A violent cycle. What you need is a speaker to absorb that power and only send a fraction back to the amp. How much power your speaker eats is dependent on the ohms. 2Ω is very little so the amp still gets a load back and only a SUPER high power/quality amp will be able to run it. A 4Ω speaker is easier to drive than a 2 but still requires a good amp to handle and most AVR’s won’t do without special care. 6 to 8Ω speakers are the “normal” or average you will find. They are relatively easy to power and most bookshelves and towers fall here. HTiB speakers usually either run a higher OHM speaker so the built in amplifiers can have an easier time or a Lower OHM speaker to claim 1,000,000 watts.

 

12. Bigger Actually is Better Sometimes – It is hard to define this one as it applies to many items. Small speakers often sound small and limited, but at close range this may work fine. Trying to put small speakers in a BIG room or far away means you are mis-using them. The bigger the room the more air you need to displace to have sound travel across it properly. The same with subwoofers. An amplifier that is very small MUST be low power because to make clean high power an amp needs space for BIG cooling and a BIG power supply.

 

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13. Don’t buy Expensive Cables – Some wires you buy because they are built well and will survive a year or two of getting yanked and pulled, that is fine. On the other hand sometimes people will try to sell you wires that make things sound or look better. When in the digital realm don’t bother. HDMI, COAX-Digital and Fiber Optic wires are either working perfectly or are broken. Never better or worse. Analog wires like RCA’s, 3.5mm headphone wires and speaker cables can require a better quality than any-old-thing but never as much as you are told. Monoprice.com often has cheap cables that will do an above-distinguishable-from-expensive-cables job. Also power cables don’t matter, 110V and low load items work on anything and don’t effect actual sound quality. Most interference can usually be contributed to power issues and a UPS or power conditioner can help.

Source Reddit Feb 2014

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