Running HDMI cable

J-Rooster wrote:

msmith1199 wrote:
Do you have ducted air conditioning? I just upgraded mine a few months ago and ran the HDMI cable through the A/C ducts. I put some photos on here, I'll see if I can find them for you.

Very inventive!

Wasn't my idea. I saw somebody mention it on here.

msmith1199 wrote:
Do you have ducted air conditioning? I just upgraded mine a few months ago and ran the HDMI cable through the A/C ducts. I put some photos on here, I'll see if I can find them for you.

Very inventive!

That could work! The only trouble you might run into is they typically use a lot of splitters on the antenna system, which would kill the HDMI signal.

Mile High, that gives me another thought.

In my RV, there is Coax that is run for the Antenna. They bring it thru the media cabnet for a old school TV antenna signal booster. The Antenna coax already goes to all the TV's.

I could get a HDMI to Coax switcher, use that same cable to pipe HDMI. Heck I bet it will still work for the antenna signal (but will most likely be using tuner from DVD anyway and just have monitors on the wall.)

Our MH uses a 4X4 HDMI Matrix Switcher that converts HDMI to 2 Cat 6 cables then back to HDMI. It works fantastic and all of the sources get to be in one cabinet - Dish receiver, Roku, DVD, etc and through the switcher that HDMI signal is sent to any of 4 TVs. From any TV you select your source, and the IR remotes work through the switcher as well.

Kind of like the old COAX switchers, but true HDMI throughout the coach using Cat 6 pairs instead of the limitations on length using HDMI.

Before I ran my HDMI cable I went down and looked at new trailers and motorhomes just to see how they were wiring the A/V equipment. I did not find a single HDMI cable in any RV I looked at, at three different dealers. They all had HD TV's, and HD DVD players, and some had Satellites, and ALL were using RCA cables or regular coax. So the only thing those TV's would get a true HD picture would be from the over the air antenna.

Thanks guys. This helps. I was thinking about using the roof AC ducts and seems like that is a good solution.

I'll look at the existing RCA cords to see if I can use them to pull thru, but I gotta think they are attached and won't pull. There is a lot of extra wires here also. They route the chassis radio to this media center and such.

Thinking if I just run a new HDMI to the TV's then replace the TVs. I'll be good. This will let me run Xbox one, ps4, etc off an hdmi splitter.

jpwiggo wrote:
My 2006 Gulfstream Crescendo 38' . . . has a media center in the rear of the living room slideout. This is where the DVD/Stereo and switchbox is. Then they run RCA (red,white,yellow) standard Pin cords to the front and rear TVs (as well as standard stereo cables)

I'd like to upgrade the TVs but to do that need to run new cable

Why bother to run HDMI to both TVs?

Your new TVs will be connected to an old 10-year-old DVD/Stereo system which may not support HD. Why not chuck this old system and just connect a BluRay player to each TV?

Also, if you also want sat TV like DISH or DirecTV, each provider's equipment could probably use your existing RV's wiring (DISH's Hopper and DirecTV's Genie).

If the RCA wires are loose, you may be able to use the old ones to pull new wires through the same space. It would not be a bad idea to pull some string at the same time. (Mason's line is one reasonable option for a decent string to pull; it is fairly sturdy and inexpensive and lasts a long time.)

If you do run wires, be sure to use decent quality HDMI cables for relatively long runs. HDMI is not a very well-designed system for long cables. It was developed from DVI, which was intended to connect desktop computers to monitors and so intended for fairly short distances. Without going into technical details, suffice to say that especially for longer cable lengths poor quality cables may not work reliably.

I ran numerous RG cables from one end of my RV to the other using the air conditioner foam cut ducts in the ceiling. You can pull down the ceiling mounted vents which are about every 6 feet or so and hand feed the cables fairly easy from end to the other.

In my case I had ceiling mounted cabinets on both ends of my 5th wheel trailer and it was easy to run cables up into the ceiling mounted cabinets and gain access to the air condition foam ducts from it. Being foam you can punch you way through fairly easy when you need to get out of the foam cut ducks. Just be sure to seal up any holes that you have after pulling the cables using insulation foam spray.

Obviously all trailers are different but this might be a good place to check to see if it might work easy for you.

The Home entertainment for us was almost half way between the two ends of the trailer and the cabinets there was easy to gain access to the foam cut air conditioner paths.

When ever I penetrated the foam ducts I would use Insulation foam spray to seal up all the egress holes I made. This is important as the air conditioner ducts must be designed to build up known pressures so that the air being put into the air ducts will blow at equal pressures out of the various ceiling air ducts...

Like said this may not work well for your routing requirements but it saved me a bunch of headaches getting to the various places I needed to rout my small RG cables around the trailer.

My RG cables are both used for my Ham Radio items as well as HDTV setups...

This was before the HDMI cables and routers etc all became popular and todays methods may be your better solution for going wireless HDMI routers. I was just looking at some of these at out local WALMART the other day...

Roy Ken