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Loosen, push, tighten: Take the TV off the wall, loosen the bolts holding the arms on the back of the TV, then push up/down on the arms as you tighten them back down. Put the TV back on the wall and see if it’s level. If it isn’t, then do the same thing with the wall plate. Improvise: If you used up all of the wiggle room available and it still isn’t level, make more wiggle room. You can use the step drill bit we talked about earlier to round out the holes in the arms or wall plate. This may give you the little extra space needed; just don’t go too crazy and make the holes unusable. If you accidentally make the holes so big that bolts slip through, you can always buy larger washers.
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Nothing ruins the look of a nice television mounted on the wall quicker than a tangle of exposed wires. Luckily, hiding cables inside the wall is fairly cheap and easy. The simplest way to achieve this is with an IWPE (in-wall power extension) or a power bridge kit. These kits come with everything you need to run power up to your TV while hiding all of your signal wires (some even come with a cutting tool). You might be thinking: “Why not just drop an extension cord in the wall instead of installing an outlet?” Well, it’s actually against National Electric Code (NEC) to drop a power cord or extension cord inside the wall. It’s also not legal to put low-voltage cables like HDMI inside the wall unless they’re CL3-rated for in-wall use, which is one reason expensive HDMI cables are worth buying.
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An IWPE is exactly what it sounds like, an extension cord rated to go inside the wall. In the end, you will have an outlet behind your TV, and what’s called an inlet down by the floor (at the same height as your other outlets). To provide power to the kit, you connect an extension cord from an existing outlet to the inlet. Confused? Check out these diagrams.
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Always buy longer cables than you think you need. This is the most often ignored piece of advice we give people. It doesn’t matter if your TV is going on a wall or sitting on a stand, buy longer cables than you think you need. Extra wire can be wrapped up, stuffed in a wall, or otherwise hidden. If the cables are too short, you risk them falling out, simply not reaching, breaking, or worse yet, damaging your equipment.
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For a typical flat panel installation, with a tilting wall mount and equipment located directly below the TV, 8-foot cables will work nicely. Twelve-foot cables will allow you to make connections before the TV is on the wall, or pull out the equipment once it is hooked up. If you’re mounting a TV higher than normal (the bottom of the average TV is between 36 inches and 46 inches from the floor) or using a full-motion mount, you need 12-foot cabling. If that seems excessive, consider this: On a typical full-motion mount with a 20-inch arm, you will use 3 to 4 feet of cable before even reaching the wall; that is, if it’s properly routed to allow safe movement of the TV on the arm.
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Put your back into it: Walk up to the TV as it hangs on the wall, grab onto the sides, and then try to force it into being level. No, really. Your success here depends on how snug the bolts are that hold the wall mount arms on the back of the TV. If they aren’t over-tightened, you should have a little wiggle room to help level the TV. As a side note, if you do this and the TV comes off the wall, you did something wrong … so be careful.