Cables, Cables and more cables

[Pinnacle]

I'm looking at relocating my TV in the living room. At present it's on a partition wall that backs onto the kitchen. Previously we had Sky and had a Coax cable running through that wall onto a magic eye to the TV on the other side.

I will be moving the TV and the other components to another wall and will chase the cables into the wall between the TV and the AV receiver.

At present I have:
Plasma TV (HD Ready)
AV Receiver
V+ HD box
VCR / DVD combi unit
Wii
Xbox 360
V+ Router

I have all the cables for these and will be chasing the ones I need into the wall plus the following:

Additional HDMI
Additional Scart

What other cables should I run in the wall for future usage?
My wife has an IPad2 but we haven't got the Apple TV module yet. So I'm considering that. Also a cable to connect a laptop or something to the TV also, not sure what cable that would be though.

 

[gblades]

For a cable suitable for a notebook I would just put in a VGA cable. Your plasma has probably got a VGA socket and most other TVs have VGA inputs. If you are using a computer with a DVI output then you can just use an adapter.

 

[mikej2005]

What do you need the additional scart for ? They're slowly but surely becoming obsolete as HDMI becomes more commonplace.

If you want your installation to be more future-proof, then I'd think seriously about making sure you have enough HDMI capacity, particularly as you're likely to replace the TV at some stage in the future.

TVs are getting thinner and gaining more HDMI sockets, whilst losing older 'legacy' sockets like VGA/scart etc. My new Panasonic plasma, for example, requires the use of special adaptors for these sockets and even then only has provision for 1 of each (so only 1 scart).

Most laptops also output via HDMI these days too which, unlike DVI/VGA, has the advantage that a separate audio lead is not required.

For the Wii, I highly recommend using component inputs if your TV has them.

 

[gblades]

What's the av receiver being used with?
Newer ones do hdmi switching and I now only have the one hdmi to the tv. The hdmi from each device carries the audio straight to the receiver which is ideal for the xbox as it's a pain to get surround sound if you don't do it this way.
Modern tvs will have audio path return back down the hdmi for watching tvs freeview with audio on receiver.

Couple of suggestions:-
Satellite point incase you want to use freeview/freesat.
Network cable for Internet connection.