I have a mess of coaxial cables that dead end in my laundry room--just hanging out of the wall. A few are hooked up to the cable TV. Most are not.

Anybody got any advice on what I need to tidy those cables up and get them all connected?

On a related note, my house has about 6 or 8 pairs of built in speakers (with a volume **** in each room they are in) and 2 more sets of speaker wires in one room for wall mounted surround speakers. They are not currently hooked up, but I'd like to get them working. However, it seems to me even if I buy some equipment and plug them all in, I'll be limited to a single source for all the rooms (without any on/off controls), since I don't have any additional cabling in place to run back to the gear to turn the gear on or switch between sources. Anyone have a similar issue and figure a way around it for a reasonable cost? I had an AV contractor come in and he wanted 10K to fix it all up, and was going to leave holes in the walls in lots of places where he intended to run new cable. Not what I wanted to hear on any level.
Thanks in advance for any input.

 

10K?? OUCH!
I wired up my house 15 years ago as it was being built and I installed speakers & level controls in every room and even on the porch, patio, and garage (12" guitar speakers up there...)
About 5 years ago, I abandoned the whole system due to the single source. After getting an MP3 player, i collected old receivers and put them in the garage and back room, so the controls would be right there. FM transmitters worked well and extra unused computer speakers worked in my workshop.

The surround speakers in the living room walls are all I still use. I still use plain Dolby surround!

I might be able to help out a little, but not being there will make it tough.
Also,

 

The house was built about 6 years ago by someone else. They never used any of the stuff either--I think they realized it was already out of date as they were finishing. The real problem is that all the wires deadhead at one spot, and I don't want to go fishing around in walls (no map of where they were run, natch) to try to pull a few out to use for local sources in the rooms.
Guess I'll look for a wireless solution.

 

I use a smoll device for tracing phone & electrical wires in walls cars & especial old conversion vans You will need to connect a output source like a radio or 9 V battery go talk to the older guys at radio shack they have them or can get them the one I have puts out a tone Loud when I am on a strong signal

 

Do you have in one room all the tails for the speakers in each rm? or are they all daisy chained together ? If You have one set of wires to run the whole set up they you might have a 24 volt commercial type set up Your speakers will be different and not a standard 8 ohm set up. They might have power transformer on them. I that is the case you will need a amp set up for that . If you have say 5 rooms and 10 tails for your speakers then you will need a impedance adaptor that will take a source in and split it up to all speakers you choose to use. It will be real hard on your source if you wire all to one output without the impedance adaptor .You can get them at best buy . I just did the same thing at my mother in laws house last year . You can get a receiver that can play two or three zones so you can hook say cour upstairs to zone one basement to zone two and play classic music upstairs and rock down or your surround on zone one and the other rooms one zone two . I use a tone generator at work from time to time
when I set up the public address system at work people get all up in arms sounds like a alarm going off. So to wire this you would come off receiver out put for say zone two to the speaker selector input
connect all speakers you want on that zone and you should be set. Then set up surround as stated in manual left right and so on You can pick up a nice denon That will do just that the selector switch ( impedance
matching adaptor) should have on off buttons to turn on and off speakers to see what is what . Good luck

 

I'm a cable plant engineer for the master feed for all of Chicagoland and upper IL.

You just need a signal toner to tone out each wire, and label it.
Most likely if this was wired within the past 6 years, it's all up to spec RG-6 cable.
You also just need a set of cable strippers, connectors, and the crimp tool to secure them.
These are all available at Home Depot in the Electrical section.

This is the tone generator I use at work. It has 2 alligator clips to clip onto a cable connector.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP0At...ext=1&index=22
The black clip goes on the outer rim of the connector. The red clip goes on the center conductor.
Do NOT let them touch or they will cancel out and you won't tone anything. They have shields.

Put the toner on the room end, and go to the laundry room cluster and search for it. Then label and connectorize it.
Then when you are all done Identifying the cables, you can determine which is the source to feed (input) a splitter and
which are going to be OUTPUTS and to which rooms. FYI - often there are more then one distribution point in a house.
Depends on the size of the house, and how many floors.

Cable TV frequencies are not the same as Satellite, so you have to be sure you get the proper signal splitters too.
0-860mhz is the cable frequencies. When you go higher then that, it's for Satellite.

 

If i had a buck for very closet i have went into that looked like that . Houses are the worst tie eia who. 568a what ? your coax could be terminated and depending how many you have put in a double gang box with a face plate and some barrel connectors to make them look better or put in a large box they sell at home depot or others that you can buy snap in modular pieces for just what you need you can tie in all your coax to one input or make your own with a few taps depending on what you need as mentioned above by Ace. I like the snap and seal type ends from ideal you will have to know if it is rg 6 or 59 and if it is cmp or cmr the out side jacket will be different between them . we use rg-6 quad shield I also use a razor knife to prep my cable but im old school.