Advice for routing wires to a new fireplace-mount HDTV?

[bperniciaro]

The image shows how my living room is arranged. On the far-right you see a receptacle and coax cable box. These are the closest sources for these wires.

My only thinking is to tear-out the baseboards, wire everything around to the side of the fireplace, cut a hole in the sheet-rock and somehow fish it up to the height of the TV, then team out sheet rock again in order to get to a box which would mounted behind the television.

1. Is this the most logic approach?
2. Would routing wires down the sheet rock by the fireplace be next to impossible because of the insulation?
3. Would it be wire to route every possible TV connection since re-routing will be difficult once I close up the walls?
4. Are there tubes you can buy that make it easier to bound all of the various wires which will need to be routed to the receptacles?

 

[americanaudiophile]

What you can do with your signal cables (HDMI, RF coax, cat etc) is one thing. What you can do for AC and meet code is another.
Your plan for the signal cables may be OK but it won't meet code for AC wiring. Don't forget you won't have your sources at the TV but somewhere else so you only need to run one HDMI (either HDMI cable or 1 or 2 cat5e/6 for signal) and do your switching at the sources.
If the room has a basement or crawl space you can go down and up in the wall. If you have siding on the house you can go out and back in.
You can run conduit with pulls so you can run additional cables in the future but not without some repairs. Looks like the room is recently done so that may not fly.
If you don't have wire pulling skills you could hide the wires with wiremould or wood moldings. I would find a good installer in you area and let them do the work. Sometimes it's nice to have someone else take the blame.

 

[bperniciaro]

Thanks for that detailed answer.

There is no basement and above is a second story (with no crawl space). So I'm somewhat limited.

Could you expound a bit regarding switching at the source? I was under the impression that I would run one long cable for each potential device like I normally do when they're right next to one another?

 

[americanaudiophile]

You can use an HDMI switcher at the sources so you only need one HDMI cable to the TV. Some are even automatic so they switch when you turn on a source.
http/www.monoprice.com/Product?p_id=13703&gclid=COfpmqemm80CFYw2gQodW-4Ozg
I would also run extra CAT6 cables as they can be used as HDMI or other types of connections with adapters. You might use this type of adapter with two CAT6 instead of a thicker HDMI cable so it's easier to hide.
http/www.walmart.com/ip/Tripplite-B125-101-60-IRU-Hdmi-Cat5-Cat6-Kit-Transmitter-Receiver/50833967