Re: Planning Ahead

No, I wasn't home...the wife and I were out at dinner, but all 4 kids were
home. My oldest son called our cell phone and said lightning had struck the
house. I figured he was wrong, that maybe it just struck really close, so I
told him he was a Boy Scout and should check for fire and do what was
necessary. My younger son called a few minutes later from the neighbors and
said the house was on fire so we should come home. Of course, the traffic
lights were out all the way home, so it took us a while. Fortunately the
fire was confined to the attic, so there was no fire damage to the Stuff.
Unfortunately, they put several hundred gallons of water in the attic, and
an hour later the high ceiling over the living room collapsed, burying
everything in a foot of soggy burned insulation (and sheetrock bits). And
narrowly missed my wife and neighbor who were helping to put buckets under
the leaks...

And if you think this is a tale, it gets better. They condemmed the house
because the rafters were burned, so the insurance company moved all our
stuff into storage while it was being rebuilt. The day they took the roof
off to replace the rafters, it started raining and they left for the day.
Several rainy hours later, I found that all the smoke alarms were going off
(I guess they do that when they get wet) and light fixtures were filling
with water. Fortunately I got there in time and switched off all the power.
The sheetrock all got soaked, so the construction company had to basically
strip the whole house down to bare studs and rebuild (at their expense,
fortunately, as I had the whole day on video via my webcam). It took them
longer to rebuild the house than it did for the initial construction.

Needless to say, it's not something I want to have repeated...

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"Mike R." <MikeR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9180BBFF-E056-4EDA-A192-DC7B38ECC534@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ouch! Hopefully you weren't home when it struck... I know it would've
startled me a bit. Luckily all our outside wires and cables are
underground,
although that's no guarantee they won't get hit, or that someplace above
ground won't get hit and travel.

I've noticed that some stores are not designating routers as 'Pre N'
anymore, just 'N', and I don't really know if the 'N' is for real yet (not
'Pre'). I'm sure that the extenders wouldn't use 'N' as long as it's still
in
the 'Pre' state. I'm going to try and 'Pre' think about all the places I
might want a TV/Movie signal and hopefully won't need to use the wireless
capability... although having it sure does take the pressure off having to
get it exact.


"Dana Cline - MVP" wrote:

Actually, we built that house in 98 and moved out in 2004, so it never
had a
Media Center in it. If it had, I would have used a wired extender to
bring
it to at least the living room.

I don't think any current extenders do pre-N, and have not heard any
specs
for the Vista extenders. I'd be a bit surprised if they used pre-N as
it's
not quite a standard yet...

If I were to do it all over, I'm not sure if I'd run the cables thru the
attic or not. In 2001 the house was hit by lightning... it entered thru
the
roof over the master bedroom and immediately went into the wiring. Fried
network cards and modem cards in all the PCs, as well as frying the TVs
thru
the video cables. AC surge supressors worked great, but the damage came
thru
the network, video, and phone wiring. Most larger surge supressors these
days include phone and video connections, but network surge supressors
are a
bit more expensive (and you need one on each end of a given piece of
cable).

Of course, it could have been a fluke, probably will never happen to you
<g>.

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"Mike R." <MikeR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:A14B301D-0560-440C-8525-BF9D5A4BB176@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks. Your setup sounds great and it's the same idea as what I'm
thinking
of doing. Am I right in assuming that the distribution center itself is
fed
by MCE (via an extender maybe) and it takes care of distribution from
there?

Is there anything you didn't do or forgot to do that you wished you
did?

Right now, I just want to get all the wiring in the walls and have them
all
together at some point in the basement. Once that's done, it should be
fairly
straightforward to hook equipment up.

From the looks of the capabilities of the CAT6 cable, that will
probably
be
what I'll put in.


"Dana Cline - MVP" wrote:

Cat5e should be fine for what you want, although there's a new cable
type
(Cat6?) that includes 2 coax and 2 that can be used for either network
or
phone. I'd offer a suggestion based on the house we built in Colorado
in
98... Pick a spot (ours was in basement under the stairs) for all the
cables
to terminate. Our phone and cable came into the house, went under the
stairs. Each room had network, 2 video, and phone to all rooms. I had
a
video distribution amp there that fed video to all rooms, and a
16-port
network switch that fed network to all rooms (and a phone splitter
punchdown
panel too). The family server and laser jet also resided under the
stairs.
It was a very practical arrangement.

With that second rf cable, I could send video _to_ the distribution
center,
such as from a security camera...you can even send composite video
(which
my
cameras output) over a rf cable if you have the right connector...

All cables to the 1st floor went thru the basement ceiling then up
into
the
1st floor walls. All cables to the second floor went up to the attic,
then
dropped down into the 2nd floor walls. So it helped that we had a
passage,
about 1 square foot, that went all the way from basement to attic, so
we
could run more cables if necessary, or even hot water pipes if we ever
installed solar heat panels on the roof (and big tanks in the
basement).

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"Mike R." <MikeR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0395FC47-3664-4025-853B-1F586D27F170@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I know that currently there aren't a lot of (if any) HDTV tuners or
extenders
available for MCE, but I'm building a house and want to make sure
the
cabling
will be sufficient to handle sending HDTV signals to and extender.
Will
CAT5e
cabling have enough capacity, or should I get something 'bigger'?
Also,
will
a Linksys WRT54G be enough to handle the signal? Thanks.








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