Cleaning Up your Cables – What to know about Properly Hiding or Storing Cables in your Home Theater
For most people with a home theater system installed in their house, there is one of two options. The first is to be super-organized, with all of the cables labeled, hidden, and out of the way, all neatly aligned and perfect. The second option seems to be having a tangle of cables that go everywhere, jumbling into one big mess, making it almost impossible to change the configuration of your system or any of the components. The fear of having to trace the correct cables back to their source and then remove, untangle, and replace them far exceeds the drive to rearranging or adding to the home theater system.
Sadly, many of us have home theater systems with no organization behind the scenes, putting us at the heart of the second category described above. This can cause hours of tangled frustration, but for some reason most of us do not think about taking one day and getting rid of the tangles and the agony for good. There are a few simple ways to work on this, and some more complicated strategies as well to get your home theater cables out of the way and under control.
Your home theater components usually have at least two cables – one or more that run from the component to the television or VCR, and others that run to the wall socket, surge protector or power strip. To keep the power cords neat and tidy, buy a label machine and use it to label each cord before you plug your home theater components in. This will help you when you need to know which plug to pull to move your speaker system or to replace your DVD player.
Organizing the cables of your home theater system might be easier if you unplug everything, including the cables that connect each component to the others, and separate them out. Figure out exactly where you want each component to go, and then set them up again and neatly run the cables without twisting them around each other. Use twist ties or zip ties to secure them every foot or so when there is more than one cable running in the same direction to keep them from becoming tangled and out of control. It should be easy to remove the zip ties or twist ties later to change components, but you won’t have to detangle anything. The same process applies to your power cords, which should be bundled together and organized to keep you sane.
One of the worst problems with home entertainment systems or home theaters is that they sometimes fit perfectly in a special place – and there is no convenient outlet. In this case, you will have to either run an ugly extension cord behind the television to power your home theater, or you will have to allow all of those power cords to peek out from behind your home theater and run along the wall to the outlet. Whichever of these you attempt, you will have to deal with ugly cords showing on your floor, and worse yet – getting in the way. The last thing you want is to trip over a loose cable, and you certainly don’t want your children or animals to have access to live power cords.
To keep these power cords “under wraps”, use a cable hide that is designed to run along the wall and keep your cables protected and covered. These cable hides can be great for anywhere that your cables hang out in the open, and can really help you to protect them as well. If you are building your home theater from scratch, you can ask the installer to build the cabling into the wall or molding of the room. You will not have to worry about tripping hazards or about your new puppy chewing through your power cables if the cords are neatly hidden and out of the way.
Your home theater speakers provide another potential problem, since you might want speakers around the room with speaker cables becoming a huge problem. To keep this problem down, the best option, though complicated, is to run the wiring for the speakers through the walls. This prevents them from dangling or getting in the way, and if you have the necessary tools and skills, you can run your speakers just about anywhere in the room.
Sure, it might be a hassle to clean up your home theater cables today, but it will save you hours and hours of frustration for years to come.
~ Ben Anton, 2007
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
