Re: AV & Media Room Design

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Bill Kearney" <wkearney-99@hot-mail-com> wrote in message
news:f7GdnVreC5p1eOrbnZ2dnUVZ_tqnnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > I'll be looking at houses today and I thought I'd pick everyone's brain
as
> > to how best design an accessible AV center.
>
> By all means make sure the equipment is mounted such that you can get to
> both the front and the back without a lot of hassle.  This means an open
> back to the rack or one that 'moves'.  Middle Atlantic makes racks that
are
> designed to pivot out from the wall.  These aren't cheap but they do the
> job.  Or you can go with a rack on wheels and patch cables from wiring
> terminated on a nearby wall.  As in, do not pull wire straight from inside
> the walls into a movable rack.  Pull the in-wall wiring to a patch panel
and
> then use pluggable cabling from there to the rack.  This will save you
from
> pulling a whole new wire again WHEN it gets frayed/broken due to movement
of
> the rack.  Even if it's a fixed rack you still want to consider a patch
> panel to avoid breakage.  It's a little less of an issue with a fixed
rack,
> just keep it in mind.

Good idea.  I saw some wear and tear on cables that I had plugged into a
stack of equipment mounted on a turntable so I could access the back panels
easily.  If I use Lewis' closet idea, I'm not sure how I'd bring the cable
in since almost all the vertical surfaces would be taken up by bi-fold
doors.  Since I expect the room to be in the basement, I could make an
angled panel above the equipment that wouldn't be as hard to reach as a
horizontal one and that would take up a little less space than a vertical
one.

--
Bobby G.