I need to get the cable from downstairs to upstairs without tearing out wallboard. What to do…?
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Wireless TV transmission is awesome in theory but awful in reality. I would advise a service call to Comcast. We had a trouble is our master bedroom and they pulled/fished a new cable without destroying the drywall. Good luck!
Yeah. I was afraid of that.
I would second this… Except one modification. You may be able to get away with calling them and adding the internal wiring coverage… then waiting a few days or a week and call them out about your wiring problems–if it isn’t too urgent. 😉
A good professional installer may be able to recable without messing up drywall, BTW, by fishing cables.
@The Cable Issue: Yeah. The CAT6 cable would be a good choice … and I’ll see what Comcast wants for this service. I’ve got some options here that don’t involve tearing out a whole wall. 🙂
yeah wireless doesn’t always work when you really need it to if your planning on running coax add a cat5 or cat6 run for future use tv is headed toward being on internet and watching a movie via wireless just doesn’t have bandwidth to get the job done
If you are going to run cable for future-proofing, don’t cheap out and use CAT5. You will want CAT6 or CAT6a. That way, it can handle 10GigE (and maybe beyond). Running CAT5 or even CAT5e is, IMHO, a waste of money.
I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, so apologies if this has already been covered.
I use homeplug/powerline adapters to run the network over the mains wiring. Works a treat and much more reliable than wireless. I recently upgraded from the 85mbps standard to 200mbps, which I find more than adequate, but I believe you can get up to 1gbps these days.
Thanks, Leila. Great idea!
I’ll reinforce what Leila says about the Powerline idea. I just bought a starter kit of 500mb adapters for just under $40 from Amazon, and they work great! Your mileage may vary depending on the age of the household wiring, but I’ve got our satellite box, a Roku box, and a PC Media center running through a switch connected to the Powerline setup and so far throughput has been great. I’ll be adding more modules once I set my server farm up in the garage sometime in the next decade.
Unfortunately, transmitting the coax signal wirelessly across your house is pretty much impossible. It must be physically possible given that satellites succeed in transmitting many channels to receivers, but one’s home wifi network could until recently only barely transmit 1 HD signal without trouble, so consider what you’re asking when you want to transmit 150 channels, many in HD, wirelessly from one room to another. That is why all the wireless video transmission systems you can buy transmit one output signal, not the whole signal from your coax cable.
Nate, just musing here, but I thought the old adage, “Find a dog to eat a dog.”, might apply in the Gredok story. This is my way of suggesting that Gredok is/was shaped (as was Qwentin) by surroundings and circumstances. Perhaps the Kwith leader developed as he did through a combination of necessity, a preexisting proclivity for control and his own special brand of megalomania. Could it be that there was someone even worse than Gredok who was putting pressure on him, his immediate family, his local clan? How would he solve that? And let’s face it, Gredok is at his best when he is at his worst. I reference that (very) juicy moment of revenge in “The Rookie” when Gredok deals with “Mopook the Sneaky” (episode 23).
Find a neighbor with a ferret to run that cable through very small holes drilled in the drywall. From the stories I’ve heard from ferret-owning friends, you probably don’t need a hole much bigger than a 50 cent piece at each end. Admitted, you may need about 3x as much cable length-wise as you’d expect…
What a wonderful image, Tara. =)
Nate – one problem you may find is that many homes have firebreaks (horizontal 2x4s) between the studs, or sills at the floor transitions, depending on construction. And drilling through is a pain requiring a right angle drill and a 6 x 6 hole. Such small holes are easy to repair – especially if you have the gypsum board you took out – so any competent contractor or handyman can do it for you.
If there’s any horizontal displacement in the run, though, it can get ugly and expensive fast.
Is there a duct you can use? Or any other already extant opening? Often there is enough space around an existing cable run to fish a new one…