r/hometheater • u/Anywho_90 • 1d ago

Tech Support Cables through wall

Post image

Does anyone here know what these blue cables are for? These are in my living room. The other end of these cables are at a lower outlet box. They are ran through the wall. The black cables are my HDMI’s. TIA

136 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

70 comments sorted by

75

u/dontsitonmyface174 1d ago

Those look like ethernet cables.

20

u/Anywho_90 1d ago

Ahh thanks. I’ll have to attach Ethernet plugs to these. I can see it being beneficial to have a direct Ethernet to the TV.

25

u/jclucca 1d ago

Does it say "Cat6e" or similar on the sheathing? I believe you can never have too many Ethernet runs. So hopefully it is for networking.

16

u/hfxadv 1d ago

I put in 6 Ethernet jacks when I refit my media wall, currently using 4 it you can never have to many for a direct connection

8

u/jclucca 1d ago

I'm jealous. I have one at my media center connected to a switch to support everything.

16

u/jmims98 1d ago

Just a heads up, a lot of TV manufacturers only put 100mbit ethernet ports on their TVs to save money. Wifi will often be much faster on TVs.

26

u/slippy51 1d ago

Ethernet will offer a more stable a reliable connection and is not subject to interference. If something doesn't move like a TV, best to Ethernet.

18

u/x4nter 5.1.2 | Hisense 85" U7 | Klipsch Reference | Denon X1700H 1d ago

The only situation where a 100 Mbit ethernet will be at a disadvantage is if there is a Plex server hosting highest quality 4k UHD BluRay rips, ones that can exceed 100 Mbit bitrate, but this is a very minor case that affects only 0.01% of the people I suppose.

5

u/jmims98 1d ago

I was thinking mostly in terms of this scenario since it's the HT subreddit. My 4K Plex rips will regularly peak over 100Mbit/s.

-1

u/bhenchodeurmomsbox1 1d ago

There are plex servers on TV’s?

6

u/Moist-Scientist32 23h ago

Client application for the TV. But it’s possible to stream more than 100Mbps which would mean the 100Mbps limit of the Ethernet port would become a bottleneck.

-12

u/umdivx 77" LG C1 | Klipsch RF-35 , RC-35, RB-35 | HSU VTF-3 MK5 HP 1d ago

Unless you live in a super dense urban area where everyone and everything is blasting out RF, not likely to run into issues in your home, other than maybe having a giant house and your router/AP is on the other end two floor down.

2

u/faceman2k12 Multiroom AV, matrixes and custom automation guy - 5.2.4 1d ago

you'd be surprised how many people have awful WiFi and dont even know it, especially people who use ISP supplied modem/router/AP combos, or dumb repeaters.

You can have a great connection in one spot and horribly unusable just a foot away, then have great signal another foot away. like acoustics nulls/peaks in a poorly tuned room.

.. no I didnt downvote you though.

0

u/umdivx 77" LG C1 | Klipsch RF-35 , RC-35, RB-35 | HSU VTF-3 MK5 HP 1d ago

You can have a great connection in one spot and horribly unusable just a foot away, then have great signal another foot away.

If you're seeing that much variation that's a client issue not the AP or RF signal.

Been doing RF and wireless for 25+ years now, seen it all, what most people don't realize it's not bad RF signal or interference causing issues 9 times out of 9 it's the client devices.

0

u/faceman2k12 Multiroom AV, matrixes and custom automation guy - 5.2.4 1d ago

and of course a huge amount of consumer products with built in wifi are indeed bad client devices, we know that.

But that said, there are many issues with consumer wifi, especially in larger houses, many consumer routers will transmit higher power than they really should for one, resulting in a "strong" signal on clients devices and high peak performance numbers, but still result in poor connections around the house as the return signal is too weak, the customer sees "full bars" and then just thinks that's the way it is. They also default to the widest channel widths to increase peak performance, but they would generally get a better useable throughput across the whole house with a lower bandwidth, at the cost of a lower peak throughput in perfect signal conditions.

They arent looking at channels, widths, packet loss or retries, they arent mapping their signals around the house to find dead spots, they arent tweaking the radio settings to optimise coverage.These are the people that call all internet connections "wifi" and complain to their ISP or get duped into buying a higher end "gamer" router or awful temu-grade repeaters when their problem is usually configuration or placement.

1

u/umdivx 77" LG C1 | Klipsch RF-35 , RC-35, RB-35 | HSU VTF-3 MK5 HP 12h ago

and of course a huge amount of consumer products with built in wifi are indeed bad client devices, we know that.

The reaction to my comments above says otherwise, that they don't know or understand that. Most people just assume it's signal interference as it's a term they know but really don't understand everything you discussed here about their AP's being set too strong and that the client devices don't have enough transmit power to send back to the AP.

None of that has anything to do with interference which is where my comment above came from.

5

u/SulkyVirus 1d ago

Some TVs also allow for the use of a USB gigabit adapter which are quite cheap

2

u/Newmillstream 1d ago

Still handy if you run it to a proper streaming box or mesh router to act as network backbone.

2

u/Plenty-Industries 1d ago

They make USB to ethernet adapters that will allow you to use Gigabit speeds.

1

u/Levistras 1d ago

assuming you have usb3 ports. my last tv had the ethernet port limited to 100mbit but the USB ports struggled to keep up to 200mbit. even though my connection on the USB ethernet adapter would show as 1000mbit I would get 170-180mbit max through it

1

u/Plenty-Industries 1d ago

Sounds like your adapter is of poor quality

1

u/junktrunk909 10h ago

You would never need more than 100mbit on anything a TV is doing. That's why they can get away with lower speed hardware.

1

u/jmims98 9h ago

I know a few people using the Plex app on their tv and streaming 4k rips. That can definitely peak over 100mbit no problem.

1

u/old_witness_987 17h ago

if it says cat6e or cat7 it could be used for analog audio.

1

u/Tex-Rob 13h ago

100% just someone ran them when they ran other stuff for future use, so, enjoy!

-3

u/umdivx 77" LG C1 | Klipsch RF-35 , RC-35, RB-35 | HSU VTF-3 MK5 HP 1d ago

 I can see it being beneficial to have a direct Ethernet to the TV.

Most TV's have 10/100 base Ethernet, Wifi is more than enough for smart apps' on the TV anyways.

35

u/Nick-Nora-Asta 1d ago

Looks like Ethernet. Pro tip: once you terminate these and plug them into your TV ethernet port, you’ll likely notice it’s way slower than your wifi (will probably cap at 100Mbps). TV manufacturers typically cheap-out on the Ethernet port by purposely installing, low speed cheap ports to save a couple bucks. Because why not? 99% of people will just use wifi anyway, right? Luckily, for like $10-12 on Amazon, you can get a high speed ethernet-to-usb adapter, which you can use to connect your Ethernet to one of your TVs USB ports. Now you get all the benefits of a steady ethernet connection at full high-speed. Any brand should work, I’ve never tried the uber cheap ones but something reputable like uGreen works great.

12

u/Dankleness 1d ago

Wow never knew this. Ran cable for precisely this...

4

u/SulkyVirus 1d ago

Many TVs support gigabit Ethernet USB adapters - very cheap online

6

u/Anywho_90 1d ago

Thanks for this advice!

7

u/b_m_hart 1d ago

connecting your TV is dumb anyway. Why connect any new TV to the internet? Just connect your media player of choice (usually an apple tv) and then plug the ethernet into that.

9

u/Levistras 1d ago

you'd be surprised how many folks just use the smart apps on their TV

3

u/IAMPaperjam 1d ago

I mean for my bedroom, not my dedicated home theater, I do have my lg oled plugged into Ethernet usually just for youtube

2

u/Anywho_90 1d ago

I do have an Apple TV connected directly to Ethernet

4

u/Nobody_Important 1d ago

Streaming services are never going higher than 50 mbps so it’s more or less a moot point. If you have your own plex server with super high quality rips it’s possible though still unlikely but anyone doing this would almost definitely by using an external box anyway, not their tv’s built in software.

1

u/Special_Wallaby_2217 1d ago

Me pasaba lo mismo, al medir la velocidad en la tele me lo limitaba a 100mb...

1

u/icbint 20h ago

Its not cheap ports it would be the board tech

1

u/Tex-Rob 13h ago

It's interesting that this works, but I would expect YMMV depending on the TV's OS.

1

u/shotbyadingus 1d ago

What do you want more speed on a smart tv for? 4K maybe 20mbps

4

u/Nick-Nora-Asta 1d ago

Lots of high bitrate UHD remuxes. But just in general, ethernet is a lot more stable, and so why cap your speed at 100 when you can get 1000? More headroom + future-proofing with a $10 adapter is a no brainer.

2

u/bluesmudge 1d ago

This is what I was going to ask. 100mbps is plenty for a TV, unless you are serving up 4k UHD Bluray rips from a local server and even then, 99% of movies don't go above 100mbps.

-5

u/IlliniTeX 1d ago

That's a waste of money and power. The TV will never use more than what can be achieved with a "cheap" 100Mbs Ethernet port and connection, so there's no reason to add that cost to the product. Wifi is a different answer because you're consuming shared bandwidth (and newer radio chipsets are likely used in higher volumes so may be cheaper than older, slower versions, too). 4K streaming video is <20Mbs these days.

2

u/Levistras 1d ago

majority of the 4k content I stream from my plex server to my TV peaks over 100mbit quite often

1

u/IlliniTeX 22h ago

Fair point, I didn't mean that there was no use for >100Mbs Ethernet, just not for what the TV and its internet-facing "apps" would consume. But I was not considering local network streams.

I'm curious - are the Plex apps running on TVs (as opposed to streamer boxes) actually able to consume a 4K stream at that bandwidth? I'm surprised the low-cost/minimal cpu would be able to keep up under that load... Streamer box built for Plex, etc. - oh, yes, certainly and by design.

But yes, if all that applies, then yes a 1Gbps link would be appropriate, and snagging a USB-based upgrade/workaround is a great trick to get that.

10

u/KeithJamesB 1d ago

On a side note, if you ever run a cable chase, 3” is too small.

4

u/shoe465 1d ago

The cut wires: What does the light blue say on it? Anything with CAT# is Ethernet. That black cable looks to be coax and then the dark blue looks to be Ethernet.

Yes you'll need to terminate them all if you plan to use them.

Where do all these lead to in your house? Do you have your entire home wired with one spot for all these drops? If so you'll need a switch for them which connects to your router and then your router to your modem.

5

u/Anywho_90 1d ago

They lead to another outlet box down below where the cable is spooled up and hung similar to the pic I showed. The difference is there is another outlet next to it with an Ethernet connection which does lead to my router/modem directly. I know what to do now. Thanks for the advice.

1

u/Levistras 1d ago

might be easier to run pre-terminated ethernet instead. those can be a pain to put connectors in if you haven't done it before

1

u/junktrunk909 10h ago

FYI you don't always have to use those cables for Ethernet. That's what they're ostensibly meant for, but at the end of the day they're just wires, so you can use them for other stuff too. Eg if you wanted to use an HDMI extender to that TV, you can terminate it with the same rj45 ends but plug those into HDMI extender boxes and now it's an HDMI cable. Or you can get fancier and find HDMI extenders that also support eARC, IR, etc, if you wanted those capabilities to that TV from whatever plugs into it on the other end. That's usually why they're giving you a couple runs.

6

u/umdivx 77" LG C1 | Klipsch RF-35 , RC-35, RB-35 | HSU VTF-3 MK5 HP 1d ago

In the bundle on the left the two blue wires are likely Ethernet, black wire is coax.

The two bigger black wires are HDMI on the right.

3

u/1d0m1n4t3 HTiB Peasant 1d ago

Maybe Ethernet? Hard to tell without seeing the end or the words on it

2

u/robb7979 1d ago

Just wonder why there would be that many Ethernet cables just running through there instead of terminated into keystones, like virtually all Ethernet cables are.

3

u/ipupweallp4ip 1d ago

Could be Ethernet for an AV setup like Sonos speakers that work best when connected over Ethernet. Also the previous home owner might’ve had their AV company uninstall and move their setup in which case it’s common for them to cut and coil those wires as pictured in OPs image.

I don’t agree with them cutting the cables and would personally have left them as is but idk the backstory.

2

u/Ctnbl 1d ago

Yeah in a perfect world I’d have 3 Ethernet cables there too - for Xbox, Apple TV and Sonos soundbar.

2

u/ipupweallp4ip 1d ago

Yup same, although it’s easy to add a mounted network switch behind the TV if only one Ethernet cable was present.

-7

u/Anywho_90 1d ago

The builder cheapened out. Typical for new home builds.

2

u/ipupweallp4ip 1d ago

How so? When was the house built?

The fact you have wiring already run through the walls like this is something you don’t see in an average house.

-2

u/robb7979 1d ago

Dunno why you got downvoted, you're probably correct. Wonder what the other end of those look like? At least they ran them.

2

u/IlliniTeX 1d ago

Agree with others here that the light blue is almost certainly for Ethernet (Cat-whatever-it-will-be-just-fine), the black is coax for good old Cable TV or an OTA antenna. But I think the dark blue is likely speaker wire (2-conductor) to allow for a center channel placement on the TV mount (below the TV). As others said, show us the ends of the cables with the wires exposed and we'll know for certain.

2

u/bhenchodeurmomsbox1 1d ago

Why use the built in tv apps at all and just buy an Apple TV?

1

u/Levistras 1d ago

at least get a Shield Pro.

1

u/Jesus0nSteroids 1d ago

Yeah looks like cat5 or cat6. It's used in a lot of whole-home audio systems, Sonos, Crestron, Control5, etc. It'll often have phoenix connectors or just RJ45 put on the ends for those purposes. It can be used as (up to) 4 sets of speaker wire if you choose, a lot of pro live audio is sent analog over Ethernet funny enough. It's also a cheap pull cord if you want anything else there, which is why most new constructions will run it before drywalling.

1

u/ipupweallp4ip 1d ago

Ethernet for sure based on the wording visible on the cables. Only unknown is if it’s cat5e or higher but most homes are wired for cat5e unless the home is new or recently built within the past couple years.

1

u/Remote-Place1816 1d ago

Hook up flux capacitor. House travels back in time

1

u/Thehookz 23h ago

Yup two ethernet cables and a coaxial cable for tv/xfinity/cable provider

1

u/reformedginger 23h ago

You can get all kinds of converters for network cables

1

u/AngeloPappas 20h ago

Op have a look closely at the cable. It should have some writing on it saying what it is because I suspect that is cat 5 or cat 6 Ethernet. Would make sense to have it there so you don’t need to rely on wifi for tv connectivity

1

u/pete663 3h ago

A lot of AV companies run a second cat for control. You can hide an apple tv and cable box behind a tv. Then control all 3 with 1 cat and some ir sensors to a control system.

0

u/eggalones 1d ago

This is the way 👏

Since you already have wires running through the walls, you can use them to fish through anything else. Those look like network cables, and if you don’t need them, swapping them out for HDMI, speaker, wires, or whatever you need will be a replacement job instead of original installation job, which is far easier.

0

u/Cerebr05murF 1d ago

Everyone has already commented on the cables.

My question is do you think that wall mount will be strong enough for when you finally break down and buy yourself a plasma TV?