Tidy plasma installation

bunking_off

I'm considering getting a plasma screen for our bedroom. As I want the installation to be tidy, I was thinking of wall mounting it, and having any wiring chased into the plaster. Since it'd look untidy with a shelf/unit for all of the set top boxes etc (sky, assume there'd probably be a separate tuner for the plasma, surround sound amp etc), I'm thinking in terms of mounting these in the attic above the wall that'll hold the screen.

This leaves the issue of how I control these. On the face of it, a possibility may be some kind of "magic eye" like you can get for Sky boxes, with just that mounted on the top of the screen itself. From memory, these work by encoding the infra-red remote commands onto a co-ax, with a unit at the Sky box end to decode & control the Sky box itself? As an alternative, I know that (radio) video senders also have a return path for the remote control, so I guess I could use one of these and just not use the video sender component, but these are a bit bulkier than a magic eye.

So, onto some questions.

Are there any alternatives?

Is the Sky magic eye specifically set up to control Sky boxes only, or is it reasonably transparent in what it'll receive/transmit (e.g. could I use a Sky magic eye to control the infra red on my surround sound amp)?

Assuming the Sky magic eye could in principle control anything rather than just a Sky box, what's the physical configuration of it like at the STB end? Is it such that it could only control one unit? (e.g. on the video sender I own, the IR return path terminates on a unit which physically glues over the IR receiver of whatever you're controlling, so if you needed to control, say, 3 different boxes, you'd have an issue - whereas if the termination was to something which sat nearby the boxes and radiated IR like a standard remote control, you wouldn't have such an issue).

irnbru_2

bunking_off wrote:

I'm considering getting a plasma screen for our bedroom. As I want the installation to be tidy, I was thinking of wall mounting it, and having any wiring chased into the plaster. Since it'd look untidy with a shelf/unit for all of the set top boxes etc (sky, assume there'd probably be a separate tuner for the plasma, surround sound amp etc), I'm thinking in terms of mounting these in the attic above the wall that'll hold the screen.

Checkout avforums. There's a DIY board there where users have posted their efforts.

bunking_off wrote:

This leaves the issue of how I control these. On the face of it, a possibility may be some kind of "magic eye" like you can get for Sky boxes, with just that mounted on the top of the screen itself.

On this bit I imagine you need some some sort of IR relay. Not something I've ever looked for so can't comment on its availability. Basically an IR emitter in the loft just broadcasting what you've transmitted. You will also have to consider the supply and dusty atmosphere present.

lestautomate might be worth browsing but definately avforums is your place.