Help me with ideas on how to place TVs in our new home. Also, share your setup.

[Argo]

This thread is both to ask for advice, and to get ideas from others. So share how you configured your entertainment I your house, and how you use them. Hoping to get some ideas.

Just moved from a condo to a house. Currently, we have 52" Bravia LCD. There two rooms where we initially want to place TVs: living room and a bonus room in the basement. Preference is to use tv in the living room for watching tv and movies and tv in the bonus room for video games.

The challenge is that the only place for a tv in the living room is to hang it over the fireplace. First question: is that common? For those who do it, where do you place dvr box? If I hide it behind the tv, will the remote work? Lastly, what are my option for getting DVDs and amazon video on demand to that tv?

For bonus room I was thinking of buying a 42" LCD and hooking it up to a non-dvr cable box, ps3 and Xbox. If I'm unable to get DVDs and streaming to the living room this will also become our movies tv.

[Anubis]

it is common for people to place a TV above a fireplace. it generally happens when there is no other space to put it as it is not the ideal palce. My sister did it for a while. a 52 may be really large to do it with hoever. They placed their AVR, Cable box and whatnot on a small shelfing unit and just ran cables through the wall to behind the TV.

you could hide things behind the wall if you used IR repeaters to get the remote signal to the unit, i dout it would work without them. as for getting media to it, just wiring a DVD play to it works and for amazon you need something that has amazons streaming ap.

[purbeast0]

i personally do not like tv's hung over fireplaces. in fact i'd say that about 90% of the tv's i've personally seen hanging on walls in houses are too high on the wall and have you looking up from the sitting position, which i personally hate. when i'm sitting down i want to be looking straight and putting no strain on my neck. and for the most part, fireplaces are somewhat tall so putting a tv above it simply makes it higher than ideal position.

that said if i HAD to put one above a fireplace, i would definitely put it on a tilted wall bracket so that it is angled down towards the seating positions. the ones i have seen above a fireplace typically have somewhere to the left/right that they have the components placed.

are you going to be using a receiver at all? if so this can make wiring wires in wall easier, for the sheer fact you will only really need to run 2 wires through the wall - power cable and hdmi cable to receiver (possibly more if you have different video cables). you could get a long HDMI cable and put the cable box/receiver basically anywhere in the room.

since you asked for some setup pics, here is my setup in my main living room. the wires have since been cleaned up a bit.

http://i.imgur.com/X01XU.jpg

it was funny because when i got that tv my wife wanted it hung higher on the wall prior to me doing so and i was explaining to her why higher is stupid, and she was telling me how everyone she's seen is hung higher on the wall, and again i expalined how wrong it is and why it is dumb. so i just did it the right way and now she loves it. that is a 60" tv for reference.

i also have 5 network jacks on the wall behind the stand there so that i have all my components hard wired (except the wii since that needs an adapter for it and wii online sucks).

and since i like to show my theater room that i'm working on, here is that current state. :p

http://i.imgur.com/TVVvo.jpg

[RearAdmiral]

You will get tired of looking up and/or being distracted by the fireplace. A sketch of your living room would be helpful.

[Atomic Playboy]

Originally Posted by RearAdmiral

You will get tired of looking up and/or being distracted by the fireplace. A sketch of your living room would be helpful.

Or just a straight-up photo to show what the space looks like. I'll agree with others that mounting above a fireplace is often significantly too high and will result in uncomfortable viewing positions and neck strain. An angled mount will certainly help, but you'll still be craning your neck upwards to view the TV, and that's less than ideal.

[Argo]

Neck strain is our fear as well. Unfortunately, there are not a whole lot of other options. I'll try to dig up some pictures in a little while.

[Argo]

Here are the pictures:

[SyndromeOCZ]

Remove the fireplace, put a TV in there instead(or put the TV infront of the fireplace. When you want to look at a fire then just find a good fireplace screen saver.

[Zivic]

I personally would ditch the shelves and put an entertainment center there. You still would have the lower cabinets for storage. it would also keep the fireplace as a focal point of the room rather than cluttering up the fireplace and mantel with a large display above it

[ImpulsE69]

Find another room to be your TV room. The glare from your windows will ruin any actual experience, and the height above that fireplace would be a real pain to watch anything.

Then again, if you don't actually plan on watching much on it, then above the fireplace is probably fine.