We love Home Theatre (pronounced ‘truh’) here at Unplggd. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we have a number of projects going at any given time so we haven’t had even a moment to put together a proper arrangement- until now. We have talked about Flatwire’s products before but this is the first time we have had a chance to work with this major enabler in setting up your own Theatre. Here begins a several part Flatwire 5.1 Surround Sound system install guide…

We have been watching movies projected on our wall for prolly 4 to 5 years at this point and listening to the audio on various small stereo systems in 2.1. Really great, honestly, nothing to complain about. The thing is that we now work for the most influential tech blog on the planet and we have appearances to keep up. What has been the problem in getting it all going? We even have a surround sound amplifier and speakers but we just haven't had them hooked up for fear or our little nest becoming too... nestlike. We have the same problem as everyone else: WIRING!
A lot of you out there live in apartments or condos or somewhere where cutting up your walls is either against the rules or is too hard to deal with. We happen to be at the end of a remodel and it's still too much trouble. WIRING SUCKS.

...Or so we thought.

The first thing you notice when the rather substantial box arrives in the mail is the rather substantial box. Seriously, this is supposed to be WIRING, not a stereo system… but once you crack it open, it becomes apparent that this is an installation system, and one to be taken seriously. The build quality is extremely high on this stuff which is important if it is going to stand the test of time- you won’t feel as though you are going to have to redo the install in two years when some hot new wire hits the market. Look at all this yummy stuff:
You get the wire, terminals for both ends, subwoofer wire and terminals, mesh to cover the wire and trowel putty onto, and adhesive to mount the wire to the wall.
In addition to the stuff that comes in the box, you will have to have the following tools:


  • Scissors (or 'a scissor', if you are very young)

  • Screwdriver

  • Wall putty

  • Trowel for said putty

  • Sandpappy

  • Primer and Paint (that matches your wall- we happened to be getting ready to paint anyway, so you know...)

  • The ususal chotchky to fix stuff with

First you gotta flatten out them walls, if you have cracks, smooth 'em out an' fill 'em.

We just smoothed this one down since the whole thing will be covered by the wire:

We are going to put our audio system in a closet in the bedroom (which we just built) so we drilled holes in da wall in order for the wire tape to go into the closet. We taped a bag to the wall in order to catch all the dust- DO THIS- IT WORKS:

Then we used a butch (meaning tough) knife to make a more slit shaped opening that would make it easier to slip the wire through to the other side:

Then you just spray the adhesive to the wall, taking care not to overspray (overspray will interfere with putty adhesion- oh, and make sure you have good ventilation) and bend and stick to the wall. We used a plastic CD case to flatten it the heck down- the glue is forgiving, so if you muck up, you can just pull it up and re-press (not 'repress') it down.
This is a bit of work, but nowhere near the trouble of wiring in the walls- we accomplished this in about two to three hours this morning- this included watching the extraordinarily helpful DVD that is included with the kit.
Here is where we are now- you can see how we have different length wires to reach each speaker for the front left, middle, and right speakers.

We will continue to work on this over the next few weeks and keep you all in the loop- feel free to axe questions and so forth- catch you next time. If you feel like playing along pick up the kit here for about $399.

Links to Other Home Theatre Stuff: