[Alan1975]

Dear All,

Moved into a 1930 4 bedroom house back in Sept & now we are gearing up to turn the current kitchen (4.0m x 2.7m) & living room (7.0m x 3.0m) into a open plan kitchen / diner/ living room area. I was wondering what people opinions where on what cabling & connections I should install for AV needs bearing in mind that my misses isn't going to let rip the whole house apart all at once. Kitchen living room first then moving on to the other rooms in the house one by one. So this will have to be done in stages which may take over 12 months or more.

In the living room there will be a main TV down one end currently a 28" sony crt (will be upgraded next year to 50" lcd or plasma). I also want to put a 18-20" ish TV or monitor? in the kitchen area, flush mounted in the wall if possible next to the breakfast bar. I would like to have speakers in the kitchen & living room that can be used for music or the main TV audio. I can't get cable in my area & have no plans for sky so main source for TV's will be digital freeview channels. Currently broadband is fed into the house via ADSL (has speed issues, I think due to distance from exchange), distributed wirelessly to Xbox 360, WII, x1 PC & x 1 Apple mac.

I have browsed through a number of posts on the forum which suggest either cat5 cabling, CT100 coax or both. Ideally only want to run one sort of cabling although trying to be futurish proof if poss

I would be first to admit I am complete novice so please bear with me

Cheer
Alan

[Alan1975]

Anybody?

[iamnotbanksy]

I would run in some speaker cable to locations that you want speakers and just leave it at that. Cat 5 isnt really suitable as a speaker cable and i find that i can cover my entire house at an acceptable speed for broadband with a wireless connection. The only time i would look to run ct100 cable would be if i wanted to port my sky or freeview signal to other TV's in the house.

If your not worried about the cost or time, then by all means run all three cables in!!

[Joe Fernand]

Hello Alan1975

Don't do anything until you know what your 'Grand plan' entails - you may not do the whole house in one go but start off with a 'Whole House' master plan and then cable each room/zone accordingly as you progress through the house.

Its unlikely that one cable type will cover all of your AV, Control and Data requirements - unless your willing to spend a fair bit on the technology that allows you to put everything onto say CAT5.

Joe