Is it too high? I see this done a lot. We have an outlet in our mantel. Our family room has a strange layout. It is rather long and narrow and putting the tv over the fireplace would just work best with the flow of the room.

We've had several houses set up like this. It works just fine unless the mantel gets too hot.

We have ours over our fireplace and it works great. No problems at all! Sounds like our family rooms are similar. Mine is rectangular shaped and it works best this way.

My husband the audiophile has an issue with it being too high for the best viewing possible however we hope to eventually do that as it makes the most sense with our room layout - he will have to get over it if and when that day comes. They do it all the time on the decorating shows. You do have to watch putting plasmas over a fireplace - you need to check and see how hot it gets.

We bought a flat screen last year for this exact purpose. We don't use our fire place often as it is gas and can get expensive. I love having it on the wall. Saves a ton of room and keeps sticky little fingers off the screen. I guess it's a little high, but the pros outweigh the cons IMO.

We've had this before and it worked okay but I would suggest getting one of those brackets that allows you to tilt the screen so you can angle it down. We did this and there was a huge difference for us an we liked it much better.

Another option if you don't want a tv over the fireplace is a drop down tv. We had one in a bedroom that had a small attic above it. The drop down box held the tv and raised and lowered from the ceiling with a remote. It was nice in a bedroom because an ugly tv wasn't sticking out all the time. It's relatively simple to install, too.