Where to Put the Cable Box With a Mounted TV

Part of our complete guide: How to Mount a TV on Any Wall.

Almost every customer has thought hard about where the television goes and not at all about where everything that plugs into it goes. Then the screen is on the wall, the stand it used to sit on is suddenly the wrong height or gone altogether, and there is a cable box, a console, a soundbar and two streaming devices with nowhere to live. It is worth deciding before the install, because the answer changes how the cables get routed.

1. The Four Places Equipment Can Go

There are really only four, and each one trades something away. A media console below the screen is the easiest and keeps every remote working, but it puts furniture back under a TV you may have mounted precisely to clear the floor. A floating shelf under the TV gives the same convenience without legs on the floor, and has to be fixed into structure to be safe.

A closed cabinet or nearby closet hides everything completely, at the cost of heat and remote line of sight. And behind the television itself works for a streaming stick and essentially nothing else. Most Lexington homes we work in end up with a console or a shelf, and the interesting decisions are about what goes wrong with the other two.

2. A Floating Shelf Has to Reach Structure

Floating shelves are the neatest answer and the one most often fitted badly. A shelf holding a cable box, a console and a games controller is carrying real weight, cantilevered out from the wall, and every bit of that load tries to pull the top fixings straight out of the drywall.

The hardware in the box with a shelf is usually sized for pictures and ornaments, not electronics. The shelf needs to land on studs, or on a mount that reaches them, exactly like the TV above it. Where there are no studs in a usable place, the same thinking applies as in our guide to mounting on drywall with no studs — and in a plaster or masonry wall the fixing question changes again.

3. Behind a Closed Door, the Remote Stops Working

This is the one that surprises people. A traditional remote talks to its box with infrared light, which needs an unobstructed path. Put the cable box in a cabinet and close the door, and the remote stops working from the sofa even though everything is plugged in correctly.

There are two honest fixes. Use an infrared repeater, which puts a small receiver where the remote can see it and relays the signal inside the cabinet. Or avoid the problem by running the TV's own apps, or a streaming device with a radio remote that does not need line of sight — our smart TV setup guide covers getting those signed in and working.

4. Heat Is the Real Limit in a Cabinet

Equipment in a sealed cupboard is the quiet way to shorten its life. A receiver driving speakers, a console under load and a cable box that never really switches off all produce more heat than the screen does, and in a closed box with no airflow that heat has nowhere to go.

If equipment is going behind a door, the cabinet needs ventilation — an open back, a vented panel, or in a dense rack a small fan. The same principle governs the screen itself, which is why we talk about it in our guide to heat, airflow and ventilation. A gaming setup is the most demanding version of this, and our gaming TV mounting guide covers the rest of that room.

5. Distance Changes the Cable You Need

Moving the equipment away from the screen means longer HDMI runs, and a long run is not simply a short one with more cable. Over distance a cheap passive cable becomes unreliable, and the failure is rarely a clean one — you get sparkle, dropouts or a picture that works at one resolution and not another. A certified or active cable solves it, and it is worth buying once.

If the cable goes inside the wall, it also needs to be rated for it. In-wall-rated cable exists for exactly this reason and we use it as standard; the detail is covered in our guide to hiding TV wires in the wall, and hiding cables and centering the TV covers the routing options when the equipment is not directly below the screen.

6. Power Is a Separate Question

Signal cable can run inside a wall. Household power cannot be run the same way — an ordinary power cord or extension lead inside a wall is not acceptable, and the correct answer is a UL-listed in-wall rated power kit, which is exactly what our $99 in-wall concealment add-on uses: the existing outlet is extended up to a recessed power connection behind the screen.

This matters for equipment placement because the boxes need power too. A closet across the room is a tidy place for a cable box only if there is an outlet in it. If walls are open for a build or a remodel, this is the cheapest possible moment to solve all of it at once, which is what our guide to pre-wiring new construction is about.

Pricing

Installation is priced by screen size: 32" $129, 43" $129, 50" $129, 55" $129, 65" $139, 75" $229 and 85" $279. Every installation covers mounting the TV, leveling, basic cable management, and all wall hardware. The mount itself is separate — flat $35, tilting $45, full-motion $125 (32–55") — or bring your own. In-wall cable concealment is $99, soundbar mounting is $40, smart TV setup is $35 and a powerline adapter setup is $99. Service within 20 miles of Lexington is free. Richmond is our home base, so it is free too.

The useful thing to do before we arrive is simply to decide where you want the boxes, and tell us when we get there. Routing the cables to a shelf, a console or a closet are three different jobs, and all three are easy when they are planned and awkward when they are discovered. Our guide to preparing for a TV mounting appointment covers what else is worth sorting out first.