Cable fishing complete

Last week I completed fishing cables for my video distribution system. Still no idea what the mystery blockage in the middle of my wall was, but after a lot of random wiggling and the use of a fish tape in conjunction with the fish stix I managed to get a cable run. Once that was complete, it was quite easy to terminate the cat5e thanks to some tool less keystone jacks. I highly recommend these, very easy to use!

So in total I did four of the six runs that I was originally hoping to do. I decided not to do two of the runs because they were to bedrooms that I never use, and they were pretty a pretty deep and hard to reach portion of the attic.

Now that I have cat5e jacks in my major TV viewing areas I'm in the market for a video player of some sort. The AppleTV may be a possibility although I can't help but feel underwhelmed by it. What I really want is something that's open (or easily hackable and somewhat supported) that will allow me to run 3rd party apps. I have dreams of a 3rd party app sitting on an AppleTV that will allow me to search for and schedule torrent downloads that I'll later be able to view on the TV. First I need a huge NAS that can run a torrent client though.

Cable fishing sucks

I have plans for a gigabit ethernet network that is used for video distribution. So because I didn't have the foresight to have my builder run CAT5e along with coax I've recently been trying to fish some wires down some interior walls in my house. To be perfectly honest my friends did tell me to have the CAT5e run, but I was stubborn and stupid and didn't want to pay my builder's exorbitant fees for each extra run of cable. I figured I could run it myself later and that it would be easy since I had attic access to all of the areas I needed to run cable to.

So up to this point I've spent several hours in my attic, purchased a set of fish stix, spade drill bits, and several sheets of plywood (for a makeshift attic floor). I've also borrowed some high tech cable finding gadgets from a friend.

Even after all of this I still don't have a single wire run. I've managed to get the cable up into the attic -- turns out this is the easy part with the help of the fish stix. I've also found the location in my attic where I need to drop the CAT5e wire down and drilled a hole through the header for the wire. This is where the real problems began -- I've used the fish stix in the hole I drilled, but for some reason there's a mystery blockage somewhere in the wall. Using a cable tester I can verify that the cable is in the right spot in the wall and about 6-12" above the location I need it to come out at. Unfortunately at this point it seems like it's blocked and I have no idea what it's blocked on. The stud finder doesn't see anything, and the AC line finder doesn't see anything either. To add to the mystery if I use a fish wire and push it up from the box with coax in it I can get about 3-4' into the wall, well above where the blockage seems to be on the way down. What's up with that?!?!

So I'm running out of ideas at this point. One friend suggested a fiberscope, but they're a bit too expensive. So I'm stuck.