A/V Setup for Apartment - Various Questions

We are finishing up a 6-month renovation of our 2 bedroom apartment. Unfortunately, the AV setup is a bit of a mess. Early on in the project I consulted with a local home theater person who made some cabling recommendations while our walls and ceiling were all still open, but then flaked out when it came time to give me a concrete proposal for new equipment and cost of installation. So, we ended up buying a bunch of TVs on Black Friday on our own and have to figure out installation issues. The point was that I was willing to pay a reasonable amount for someone experienced to take this off my hands, but that didn't quite work out.

Now, I am scheduled to have our electrician hang the TVs and our GC vouches for him, but I am no so confident he will make correct decisions unless I tell him exactly what he needs to do. But I think he can physically mount the sets and do the cable terminations we need (right now we literally have exposed holes and junction boxes with cables hanging everywhere, much of which cabling was unnecessary).

In brief, we are putting up a Samsung Q80R 75" in the living room, where the modem/router/DVR will be and where my speakers are and all other AV equipment will be housed. My bedroom will have a smaller Samsung Q60 R (43") and my son's room the same. The idea is for those supplemental rooms we will just use Ethernet into the sets and run the Spectrum app and other streaming apps and not have additional cable boxes. Since we ran Cat6 the idea is to use wired connections rather than wireless.

While I have a whole bunch of questions, I thought I could ask the few most pertinent ones now and hopefully people could offer suggestions and if there is patience for it ask a few more.

My main concern is getting cabling right for the living room TV as I don't want to have to remove it to add more cables later. We currently have a 1" diameter steel conduit pipe in the wall and have Spectrum having already setup on our old non-mounted TV. We also have power up on the wall for mounting. My initial thought for cabling is as follows: (1) one HDMI from DVR box to TV; (2) one HDMI from PS4 to TV; (3) Ethernet from router to TV; (4) optical out from TV to our AVR (a very old Marantz slimline model) so I can play TV through our speakers (Samsung does not have analog out). I have never used our AVR for video switching but was wondering, if I should do so, or at least have another HDMI connected to the TV and coming out the conduit to be available later if needed. I would like to hold onto my current AVR for now and upgrade later just because we have had so many recent expenses, but if there is a compelling case to upgrade now I guess I can do it.

I have additional questions, but thought I would pause there to see if anyone can offer suggestions particularly with respect to our living room setup.

Edit: Notwithstanding AVR, we are not trying to do surround sound. I just want to run TV output through our speakers in 2.0 setup for now.

 

Your ideas seem about right:
- enough HDMI cables, plus one extra, for each device to TV
- 1 ethernet to TV (IMHO)
- 1 return channel from TV to AVR (toslink or optical)

If you upgrade the AVR you can run only 1 HDMI to TV, plus one extra, then feed all devices a& their upgraded sound through the AVR.

If you accidentally get this cabling wrong you can probably justify the upgrade

Edit: Also, this is all low voltage so you don't necessarily need the conduit, I've used hatch panels on both ends so I could get more cables in later if necessary.

 

Having done both in wall and external wiring for half a dozen friends and family (some even paid me!), I would recommend getting a modern AVR. Let it handle all the signals and send just a single HDMI to your TV. You'll have a much easier time switching and managing your connections, even as your equipment changes. Having said that, can you sketch up your space? Overhead and elevation preferred At least where your gear will be and where the conduit runs.

EDIT: If you upgrade your receiver, you can use ARC and get rid of the optical from TV to receiver. So just ethernet and HDMI. I don't know if you'd need a secondary HDMI cable in this scenario.

 

The rest of my family hates having to deal with a receiver. They want to just be able to deal with the TV and cable box. That is why I am inclined to just go with the setup I described above for now. However, assuming I set up an extra HDMI in the TV that I leave unconnected for now should I plug that into the ARC HDMI on the Samsung on the assumption it will eventually go into the ARC HDMI of a new receiver. We are using a fixed mount so it will be hard to adjust the cables inputs on the TV once it is mounted without taking it off the wall. So I would like to get any future proofing correct now and not have to make changes later.

Related point. Given limited width of the conduit should I get a cheaper HDMI cable with a less thick sheath. I might ordinarily get a better HDMI cable not for performance reasons but for sturdiness. I am just not sure how many will fit in the conduit so maybe cheap and thinner HDMI cables are a better call.

Does anyone disagree with plan to run the secondary TVs in the bedroom just via internet by use of the Ethernet cables. Earlier in the process I assumed i would need cable boxes in each room and had coax put in the walls also. But I was told to just use internet and apps for those TVs and avoid the hassle of extra cable boxes. I think the only functionality I am giving up in those rooms is having a DVR and having to rely on Spectrum’s on demand features. Unless I am missing something I think that is a good trade off to avoid housing and paying for additional cable boxes. The electrician was here the other day and asked if I wanted to run internet on those TVs with a cable or wirelessly. He said some people like wireless better. Since the cables are there already I am not sure why we wouldn’t use them and how wireless could be better than Cat6 unless he screwed up the switches in the wall going to the various rooms.

The Samsung TVs already come with Apple TV built in. Would there be any reason to have an actual Apple TV box itself rather than the app. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the interface is better and you can be assured of more regular updates. Not sure the actual box is necessary and while I am an Apple user I have never had nor felt the need for an Apple TV before.

Our desk is around 15 ft away diagonally across from the router on opposite side of our living room. Due to prior internet dropout issues with an admittedly very old Dell PC we used to have, I had Ethernet run to that wall so that our desktop would have a hard wired connection. Unfortunately, that cable was never terminated and a blank faceplate was put on it with the idea it would be terminated when the electrician came back to
Do the TVs. Unfortunately, that blank face plate Is now partially covered by mounted shelves and it will now be a pain to access the space to provide for an Ethernet plug. We can do it but it will be difficult. Given the more robust internet service we now get from Spectrum and a newer router and that I will probably do a mesh network at some point I am wondering if it worth the hassle to terminate a connection by the desk. I feel like we paid for the cables to be there, but OTOH it doesn’t really seem necessary and I don’t want to start removing and reinstalling shelves. Will try to post a few pics later in case that helps.

Thanks in advance for any further thoughts and ideas.

 

Doing smart TVs with just ethernet is the now and future. Embrace it! Seriously, I haven't had cable for almost a decade due to streaming options. I think it is a fine move.

As for not using a receiver, aren't you already using one for sound? I'd suggest getting a Harmony remote. You press a button for what you want to do and it handles all the switching. If everything is plugged into the TV, you need to remember which input is which, right? You have an eye on future proofing to avoid future work on the area, why not do it now and help your family adjust? I got my mid-seventies parents down from like 7 remotes to a single Harmony and Alexa. Though they had to learn a bit (and I did a LOT of setup), they are tickled pink that they can ask Alexa to turn on the TV, receiver, and cable box and have it all work with a single voice command. Livin the Jetsons' life!

The main problem with running an HDMI is the connector, not the cable unless you are using some of the bulky CL2 rated stuff meant for non-conduit runs. I'd talk to your contractor about how many cables he can run through the conduit, 1" isn't very large and more than maybe 2 HDMI cables might be a... pipe dream. Look at Monoprice's HDMI cables (18Gbps ones to make sure things like HDR work properly). Some are pretty thin and flexible and are fully rated for all the 4K goodies. Just make sure you have it installed correctly as the active ones (which are the thinnest) are directional (they pull power from the source).

Strong wifi is fine for online 4K streaming, at least for one or two devices. Where ethernet is preferable is if you have local network storage that has even higher bitrate stuff you want to stream (I rip my 4K blurays to my NAS and stream them). Fast data transfer for pictures, docs, etc also benefits greatly from hard wires. But for your use case, I think you should be fine if you don't cheap out on the router.

For the most part, the chipsets in the TVs will always be a gen or two behind whatever current box you are using (Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, etc.) They should be fine (the one in my LG C8 work well), but you may not have the latest feature set or capabilities.

 

I'm redoing my own setup as well and jumped on this deal in case you reconsider the receiver option.

Harmony remotes work wonders for the family/

https://www.costco.com/yamaha-tsr-7850-7.2-channel-network-av-receiver.product.100456240.html

 

I recommend a Logitech harmony hub to control the tv, AVR and anything else. Your family won't have to mess with anything other than pressing the button on the remote that corresponds to what they want to do. If they want to watch TV, the TV button will turn on the TV, the AVR (and change the input) the cable box, and anything else associated with watching TV. One button. Couldn't be easier for them. Then the one remote will change channel on cable box, volume on AVR, etc.

 

Thanks for all the good suggestions. My electrician's team is working on the job now. I had to run out and buy a gigabit switch and a bunch of cables. As noted above, we cannot get three HDMIs through the conduit. So, we will do one for cable box, one for PS4 and optical return to the receiver. There is already Cat 6 in wall so they will use that for internet to the TV.

 

Got everything set up today. The setup itself took all day so haven’t had much time to get accustomed to the TV interfaces for the Samsung. I am sure the learning curve won’t be too steep, but currently it is driving me a bit nuts.

The one huge issue I am having is motion blur/judder for sports. Soccer has been almost unwatchable. On the Q60R I jacked up the judder setting all the way to 10 and it still doesn’t look good. If anyone is familiar with the Samsung models and has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

 

It looks like you should actually set it to 0, not 10?

A good resource for your TV if you haven't already read it:

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/q60-q60r-qled/settings

 

I found that site and AV Forums and will need to play around with settings a bit. I discovered that the main Q80R in the living room has a motion blur adjustment that the cheaper Q60s in the bedroom don’t have, which seems to help a bit. Also, it is less of an issue when watching directly off of a Spectrum cable box in living room as opposed to internet feed via the Spectrum app, which is all I have for the bedrooms.

I also think the larger 75” size isn’t doing any favors in the LR area when I am sitting on the sofa. If I move back a few feet it is less bothersome. Perhaps we should have stuck with the 65” set as originally planned. But not sure I want to go through the hassle of a return for that and it is otherwise a good size for TV programming and films.

 

The Samsung Smart Remote for the Q80R in our living room failed after about 10 minutes of use and I have had to use cable box remote and Samsung app in interim. I changed batteries and it turns the TV on and off but that is it. It seems to be a pairing issue but whenever I try to re-pair TV, it says “Not Available”. Seems like this is a common problem. I have tried every fix and nothing works. Called Samsung support and they are sending me a new remote but I suspect it is a pairing issue and not the remote itself.

The only thing I cannot do is unplug the TV itself as some suggest to cause a reboot as it is wall mounted and I cannot access plug on the wall. I would need another person to help me take the whole set off the bracket. I do have access to the circuit breaker and have tried turning that on and off to no avail. Should cutting power that way cause a reboot of the TV, which I think is what I want. I had turned TV power off first though. Should I leave TV on and then try turning off circuit breaker for a minute. Alternatively, what is a good universal remote (reasonably priced) I can buy that will allow me to operate smart TV functions.

Unfortunately while my Spectrum Cable box remote will turn TV on and off, switch between inputs and control volume on TV, the arrow and enter keys don’t work so I cannot use that to navigate the Samsung menu. If I could get it to do that I would not care that Samsung remote doesn’t work. In the interim I need to use the terrible Smart Things app to navigate the menu and launch apps.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N3RFC4G/ref=dp_cr_wdg_tit_nw_mr

Routinely drops to $50-60. Handles all necessary functions for my TV, AVR, and Nvidia Shield. Plus Alexa voice control via an Echo product. Particularly useful is setting up the one touch activities to turn on and switch to appropriate devices for each activity. If you run out of physical buttons you can use your smartphone.

 

Finally received our entertainment unit and am going to ask for help with a bunch of questions on how best to arrange my equipment and advice regarding potential upgrades.

My first question is whether I should ditch my separate router (an old Netgear that I would need to upgrade anyway) for a Spectrum-compatible duel modem/router. Currently, I have the Spectrum modem, my own Netgear router and a switch for additional Ethernet ports (although I haven’t used the switch yet). Tonight I was having trouble getting the router to stand on its legs so foolishly let it lie on top of the cable/DVR box. After a few hours it overheated (even though there is ventilation in the back of the cabinet) and shut down. I was thinking about how to rearrange things to create more space in the cabinet, but then wondered if I really need all three (modem, router and switch). I don’t want to pay the Spectrum rental fee each month to use the modem as a WiFi router. But I think you can buy compatible modem/routers. If so, is there any need to have a separate Standalone router too. Is it sufficient to just have the combined modem/router and then add the switch for additional Ethernet outputs. Unless i am missing something it seems like I should be able to handle my internet traffic with just the two devices. For reference, I need to direct internet from my modem via Ethernet to: 3 smart TVs; Sonos player; playstation; and home office computer. All could run wirelessly but we had run Cat 6 throughout so want to take advantage of those connections.