New house fully wired up - where to next?

[davidhar]

Just bought a new house which is fully cabled for "multi room audio". I'm a bit of an amateur but judging by the amount of cable oozing out of the wall in the utility room I can safely say shortage of wire will not be a problem. Each room has cabling for TV (cables are coax, power, 3 core AV?), a control panel and speakers in different wall and ceiling locations

The developer is pushing me towards a particular installer but before I go to them I want to get an idea on what I should be looking for.

The things I think I will need are

- ceiling mounted speakers? (cables are hidden inside of ceiling and joists in each room)
- some sort of a rack in the utility room to tidy up and hold the hardware
- control panels in each room (the showhouses had Opus, Elan and Living Control Panels)

What needs to go into the rack? CD, Tuner, DVD, Sky, Hard Drive unit? Could I buy these goodies and get an electrician mate to fit them or is there a secret sauce recipe which means I go with developers installers and pay the toll? Any idea what this should cost me? Could I save by sourcing the components?

Thanks in advance for any help.....

:)

[neilball]

You could save by installing some kit yourself - ceiling speakers, equipment rack or shelving, general sources etc. It is the audio & video distribution systems that may be more difficult - some are only sold to the trade for example.

Where you will have difficulty is if you buy all of the kit and then cannot get it working as you could struggle to find installers willing to come and work on equipment they have not installed and the manufacturers may not offer much direct help either.

[lazers]

Where abouts are you.