Suggestions for wiring a new home

[frenchophile]

Greetings from Northwest Indiana! Congrats on finally getting ABC and FOX in HD on TWC. I am in the process of building a new home and want to make sure I have it wired appropriately and thought some of you might be able to make some good suggestions. Should I have RG-6 throughout the house? Is there something better? What about T-1? Should I spend money on that, or will wireless LAN be adequate? I will be talking with a local TV guy about setting up and wiring my tower with antennae and dishes, too. Anyway, any suggestions anybody has will be appreciated. I will check back periodically. Thanks! Taha

[nakedeye]

id put as much cat 5 as you can. perhaps even multiple lines per outlet. you can send hd via component over cat5 with a converter. id also have 3 lines of rg6 for every port as well.

[Captain_Rob]

Technology changes, so the main thing is to make sure you can easily fish future wires. For a 2-story house with a Basement and Attic, a good solution is a conduit from the Basement to the Attic. This way you can fish wires to the Attic and then back down into the 2nd floor room, or from the basement up to the 1st floor.

[festivus]

I went though this. Built a new house in 2001. The basement to attic conduit is priceless for doing wiring that may have been previously forgotten.

Do RG6 to every room from where the cable line enters the basement. If you get cable, one amplified splitter can send a strong enough signal to every room. Avoid using regular splitters if you can, especially on the long runs. Your picture quality will be much better that way. Satellite systems can use this setup very well as well. 2 direct RG6 lines to your main entertainment center is a good idea, especially with Dish Network and their dual tuner receivers.

For computing, I have had no issues using wireless except for slower download speeds. You won't notice it much when browsing. I don't know how much it would cost to do CAT 5 all over the house but it sounds pricey.

[Robbiee19]

I went thru the built process in 2005. CAT 5 was not too pricey for me. I went thru a sub-cont who was authorized to work on the house during the construction phase to upgrade the wireing for home theater in the house. Also had speakers mounted the walls were needed.

[Robaticus]

If you are considering Cat 5 at this point, you might as well go for Cat5e or Cat6 wiring if you think you're going to ever do a home network that is going to push lots of video over the wires-- the 5e/6 will support gigabit ethernet better than Cat5.

R