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Should I Put My Cable Box Behind The TV?
It’s all well and good mounting your nice shiny TV on the wall, but most of us connect a cable box or a Blu-ray Player or an Apple TV or a….. you get the idea, there are often things connected to the TV that will have to go somewhere.
You could locate your cable box in a cabinet under the TV, but the whole concept of mounting your flat-screen television is often to de-clutter and make more space by removing the TV cabinet.
Streaming Devices
Let’s start with a household staple, the Apple TV. You could simply velcro it to the back of your screen, but there is a better way of mounting it to the wall or the back of your TV, which also allows easy removal for those power resets you may have to perform!
A great company I’ve stumbled across has a number of solutions for different sizes of equipment enabling them to be wall-mounted. The company is called HIDEit Mounts.
These guys have covered all bases from mounting a small general device with a universal solution to specific device’s such as an Nvidia Shield.
Game Consoles
They even have Playstation and Xbox consoles covered…
Playstation’s and Xbox’s are large games consoles, so I would suggest you mount your flat-screen television on an Articulating Bracket so you can push it back as far as possible, allowing for enough clearance and future access.
Other Equipment
If you have some obscure equipment you would like to fix behind your TV, the other option is to use a universal media device mounting bracket.
It is designed to bolt to the VESA mount on the back of your TV.
Samsung One Connect Box
Finally and for Samsung fans one of the best solutions for fitting a TV on the wall is the One Connect Box.
This is a separate input/output connection box used for the Q7 and up a range of Samsung Smart TV.
It’s a great idea; you have one thin cable that connects to your TV, which is less conspicuous than a bunch of HDMI cables. However, If you want to fix your television to the wall, you will have to consider where this box will go.
There are some in-wall mounts available for this from HIDEit mounts. If you want the screen to be as flat as possible and you are mounting your display onto stud-work then there are ‘behind TV boxes’ available to house this and other components.
You could even cut one of these AV Enclosures into a block-work.
There is a UK company Future Automation that also makes this kind of solutions which also allow a TV bracket to be recessed inside for that super sleek finish!
Should I Put My TV Cable Box In A Cupboard?
Depending on the wall construction this could be simple but you must consider the size of the cables that will need to be fed through the holes made.
Power plugs can be removed and re-terminated. However, HDMI cables cannot so easily be re-made as there are 19 very small wires inside the sheath of this type of cable.
Another consideration is control. Most cable boxes are controlled using an InfraRed (IR) remote control, this requires line of sight to operate.
You can but extenders that are able to repeat the InfraRed signals such as the BAFX IR Repeater Kit
This works by running the infraRed receiver wire from the cupboard or remote location to the display.
Should I Put My TV Cable Box In A Media Cabinet?
If you have lots of devices that you simply cannot do without such as a cable box, blu-ray player, games console, etc then you can still use a media cabinet.
A TV hovering above the cabinet can actually look quite cool, especially if you are able to hide the cables from the display into the wall for that super clean finish.
Final Words
So those are a few solutions to the question – where to put cable box?
Using these mounts will require careful consideration as to which type of mounting TV Bracket to use.
Most Flat to Wall Brackets will fit too close for all but an AppleTV box to sit behind, as mentioned above this is where the Articulating TV Bracket can be used.
If you’d like to learn more about mounting your TV check out my Beginner’s Guides & Buyers Guide’s