Many systems seem to be moving toward wireless controls through iPhone or iPad which I doubt you would have trouble figuring out. These are cheaper than brand controls particularly if you already own. Still, at least one hardwired touch screen (or one per floor) is a good idea, but this doesn't necessarily have to be in the wall. Check out Control4 and Elan g! for examples. These systems can control more than audio (thermostats, security, ...).

Running wire for ceiling speakers is very inexpensive during construction. Just have them loop wire to all the rooms so you have flexibility in choosing locations later. Don't go for the real expensive wire.

I would wire the house with Cat6 (internet) and coaxial cable to all video locations (the place where you will have a cable box, etc...). This can be hidden in a cabinet. From there run a conduit to the back of the television display (or projector). You can control everything manually or use your remote with an IR repeater - the repeater allows your remote to control stuff that is out of sight.

You might consider a home theater (HD) projector instead of LCD display if you have room for a really big screen in your basement. Price may actually be less and they are great. The sound system for home theaters can get out of control so avoid getting too ambitious.

I think the cable companies are starting to offer DVR service for multiple TVs (i.e., Verizon FiOS), but don't know about satellite. You might check with them about setup requirements.

Enterprise router? I would get a gigabyte (fastest) router with enough ports for each cat6. A 16 port router is $400 or so.

If you will have a lot of equipment in a closet or cabinet, make sure there is some ventilation.

Hope you find someone reasonable.

This is tough. Much easier to wire for everything which does cost some money.

Am I getting this right that you currently have no HDTV or flat screen and you are going to have at least 3 in your new house?

That is a big change and I would argue that you are not in a great position to know your needs re:set top boxes. I'd back up and say what would the majority of people building a house like this do (even though we all hate to think about resale). What most people do is setup TV's that hang above fireplaces to be connected to a settop box that they can't see. I have not been in a newer house with a settop box on the mantle.

In my area, I can't get Golf channel without a settop box. I have a TV without a box and I can get networks and news channels.

Having an HDTV and watching non-HDTV signals can be painful to watch. Your HDTV options are often limited without a box.

You don't need to go crazy wiring your house and I don't think I could convince my wife ever to have touchscreens on the wall controlling anything. But - you should plan for settop boxes at every public TV that are hidden. You should have a settop box everywhere you want to watch Golf channel. It is probably up to you whether you want to see the settop box in your bedroom but I think I know the answer to that...

I would wire internet to each TV location.

You are right that wireless maybe the wave of the future with a lot of this but there are inherent copyright concerns that limit wireless transmission. And there are potential health issues with massive wireless transmissions in the house. No one is yet talking about wireless settop boxes and I am sure that they will be talked about 5 years before you see them. The encryption issues are significant.

Yep, David, no flat screens - and believe it or not we are perfectly fine with it! We will buy 3 for looks reasons (basement, screened porch and den.

Wiring is already in the budget so we are good there. What is not in the budget is what we hook the wires up to!

As far as set top boxes go, the only place we can't have one is on the screened porch (above fireplace with no cabinet nearby). All other tvs are in bookshelves, armoires, etc. so the set top box is no problem there. We can just put it in the cabinet/armoire and shut the doors. I guess an IR remote would work for this so we could control it without opening the cabinet - I really know nothing about this!!!

I know they make those tiny digital cable boxes that you can hide behind the tv (they don't have a guide but you get all the channels). Can you get the same result with a tv with a QAM tuner? Will either or both of those get the golf channel (I assume yes - it is in the 300s for us)? What about a tv with a cableCARD? The screened porch is probably the major place my husband will watch the golf channel so this is important!!!

I think we can figure the rest out but the real issue is the DVR. Can we put a DVR in the electronics closet and run it on a couple of tvs (I think the answer is yes to this)? Can you run a DVR with an IR remote (so you can put it in a cabinet)? I would happily buy multiple DVRs rather than paying 7000 for digital video distribution. . .

There is a big benefit to being able to watch what you record on multiple tvs. I am not sure we need the can watch everything on every tv option of video distribution, but (and I am thinking really about my husband because I rarely watch tv or DVR), but it would be great for him to be able to watch his dvr shows on a couple of tvs, and 3 would be better.

Max, we will have an alarm system and keypads for that (not that antiquated but close!) . . . I like the idea of some light control but can't I just do the x10 stuff myself? I have the earlier version of that (with the plug in receiver that you got at Radio Shack) that controls outdoor lights and a couple of lamps and it works fine.

I really think an entire system integrated system controlled by ipads/ipods (which we already have) is even more than we want to do. . .

What company will be providing your service? We have DISH. We have 2 receivers, but only one has DVR. We have more than one TV routed from each receiver. The TVs on the DVR receiver can watch the DVR shows.

I see no reason to get touch screens if you do not want them.

We have Charter now and I would prefer to stay with either Charter or UVerse - don't like the aesthetics of a dish. I thought you had to have a box at each tv with a dish too but maybe not? There are a couple of places where I am putting a very small flat screen - kitchen counter and laundry room (to watch while folding and ironing). I don't care about anything but basic cable in there but certainly don't want a box in either of those places. That is why I was leaning towards cable (which is what we have now). . .

To control room audio without knobs or screens on the walls you probably have 3 choices, either a hardwired tabletop controller, remote control from the vendor, or iPad. If you are do it yourself type, look at HAI.

For multiple room DVR, I think everything is moving toward streaming video via internet protocol (think Hulu and Netflix). Not that the DVR is dead yet, but cat6 will give you the most flexibility.

Hi athensmom,

I don't know much about AV stuff but my husband loves it and he handled most of the wiring decisions. I will freely admit it-we love tv! It's almost never on during the day while our son is awake but we do like to watch some at night to wind down and we love watching sports.

We have 3 televions- family room, exercise room and office.
We don't believe in tv's in bedroom but had them wired just in case. We had cat 6 wiring to all the bedrooms.

As far as music, we used the sonos system and I must say, I love it. We only bought one receiver which means you can't listen to different songs in different room but that's fine with us. We put in speaker outside, kitchen, master bath, excercise room rec room in basement. It's all controlled by our iphones. The ceiling speaker were pretty inexpensive and we have a simple white volume knob in each room. Don't regret this one bit. Just this morning my son was playing outside I was deadheading my roses and we had classical music on.

We have direct tv and their DVR does function such that you can watch recorder material on any tv; I believe uverse has a similars set-up.

There's also an iphone app to control your thermostat.

We just got a standard alarm system. No touchscreen control in our house anywhere. I'm sure if I had it I would like it, but I'm not regretting not getting it.

Thanks for the input! The zone thing is something my husband brought up this morning. Do you just turn the speakers down in all rooms where you don't want to listen to music? I can see my husband listening to sports radio outside on the screened porch and I don't want to have to listen to that ;)

We will have a bunch of tvs particularly since we are not tv people (or at least I am not - my boys and husbands are sports fanatics). One in master but no other bedrooms but playroom, den, basement, screened porch, exercise room, and a few other tiny ones.

Most don't need DVR, several don't need digital cable, but several that do (mainly because you have to have it to get the golf channel on Charter which has moved to the 300s). . .

Our receivers are in our DISH room (fancy name for storage room under our DR). We have an infrared sensor/remote for great room TV, but not the other TVs. It's my DH department. Not really sure how everything works.

More than one TV to a receiver - but, for example, two TVs on one receiver then they have to watch the same channel. It's easy to figure out, depending on your family and habits. We've never ran across a problem but only two of us at home and usually no more than two guest rooms occupied at once.

In your first post, you mentioned several TV's not needing settop boxes - but then you say you are planning for them. Each of these little details is important.

Are you putting in a conduit from your built-ins to the TV location? Or are you doing HDMI?

The QAM, Cablecard, SDV question can and does fill a forum. To futureproof, of course you need a settop box capability to get the Golf channel. So if you want to start without a settop box, you need internet and coax at TV location. Then for the possible settop box, you need those things at your built-in with a conduit or video cable to the TV location. If you ever are stuck with satellite, you might need 2 coaxs at each location for HD (although I don't personally know that).

You are not the candidate for a distributed video solution I think. But you have to consider the potential advantages. I live with 1 cable supplied DVR that goes to 3 TV's. That means $10 a month instead of $30. The problem is the expense if you can't DIY. But it is great to have a central DVR.

David - still a bit confused. We currently have 3 tvs and one set top box. The others get the first 100 channels of our cable offerings, which was fine for all tvs until charter moved the golf channel.

Are you envisioning a day where set tops will be required to get any cable? Otherwise, I think I am fine with no set tops in a few places (small tvs in kitchen, laundry room and library bookshelves).

And as you can see, even though I am pretty handy, I have no understanding of this whole topic - it is above my pay grade ;)

Do you have to have a set top box (i.e., digital box) on each tv to get the dvr on them?

RF (radio frequency) goes through walls, IR (infrared) does not. I've had very little luck with RF remotes working well, when they do work, it tends to be delayed.

For TVs, especially flat screens, I would suggest running an HDMI cable (in wall rated) and Cat5e from the TV location to a "homerun" spot. Either a closet or cabinet or utility room where the Coax from either Cable or Sattelite is located. Simple IR eyes (at the TV) and repeaters (in the homerun location) allow the IR remote to change channels rooms away. HDMI carries audio and video reliably and in one cable. Firefold.com is a good source for reasonably priced good quality in wall rated HDMI cables. Over 50 ft will require a repeater for the HDMI, there are wall plate repeaters to boost signal (HDMI has a power cable in it) that are reasonably priced.

For Audio: Wallplates require one or two Cat5e cables, depending on the system. Volume controls are the other way to go. So in a closet, you need an Amp/Receiver. A whole house system (I have BreathAudio) can be both. Inputs like your logitech unit plug into it as a source. Then you plug the speaker wires from each room into the Amp/Receiver (if you go volume controls only, then the volume control speaker wire goes to the Amp, while the wires from speakers go to the wall mounted volume control). Then you have to control the sources and amp, either by walking up to the closet and make selections, or by RF remote or IR Repeater set up. Then you turn each room on or off with the volume control.

Our last house did wall mount volume controls, and the BreathAudio was much easier to set up and use. It has built in IR repeater to control our CD Jukebox from any room. Simple Cat5e RJ45 connectors and speaker wires plug into the back of a double wall plate in the "homerun" room, and the double wall plate has a special cable to the unit.

Also, our last house had the Amp/Receiver in a closet, and it continually overheated. Just a consideration.

BDPECK

Yes - there may be a time when all cable requires a settop box. Currently networks are required to be sent over clear QAM but no others are required. You mentioned cablecard which is good for lots of other cable channels but SDV is another means of transmission and cablecard currently does not support it. SDV requires 2 way communication which current forms of cablecard do not support which is a violation of FCC rules but the issues go on and on.

Imagine you are Time Warner and you are able to get away with charging $10 a month per box. If you can thrwart FCC rules, then keep doing it.

We just have 1 settop box and it sends signal to 3 TVs. It is a HD-DVR and we control it with multiple RF remotes. If we want to watch different things on each TV, they are hooked to cable also. Now - if someone wanted to watch Golf channel and someone else wanted to watch Espn - then we would be out of luck.

BD peck - Monoprice.com is a little cheaper. There are 75 ft runs that can be done without repeaters. I have a 100 ft run that is not the best cable that works well with a $15 selfpowered amplifier. You could probably get away with 100 ft if it was the thicker cable without any amp.

Interestingly, I've have had tons more luck with RF than IR repeaters. The CFLs and sunlight always overload my repeaters.

I have had to go with a more shielded IR eye in several locations because the interference.

Monoprice is great for wall mounts. One of my 50+ ft runs works without the booster, the other doesn't. Go figure.

Our audio and wiring are going in today... dish network guy is here and with a single receiver you can get different channels to 2 tv's and then can get more tv's on this same receiver if it is "mirrored" meaning watching the same channel. The more mirrors you do, the more it disrupts the signal. Also, I know nothing about audio set-up, but I know that a fancy remote was proposed and we discovered that an ipad or iphone have the same functionality and are less expensive, or at least similarly priced, and they are much cooler than a remote!

Good luck!

Also, david_cary - I think you mentioned you don't have touchpads in your walls? Didn't you use the htd.com whole house audio components? Which system did you use and how do you control it (and the zones) if not with wall keypads?

Just would like to be able to listen to different things in different zones and can't figure out how to do this without keypads. . .

There are touchpads - which in my mind is like an IPad on the wall. I have keypads - middle grade system.

So we probably just have a different idea of what a touchpad is. The keypads are not obtrusive at all.

We LOVE our stuff from htd.com (thanks to advice from David). The "control pads" are not anymore obtrusive than the wall switches that live next to them. We also got the Squeezebox Duet as one music source (our lone one so far) but find I rarely use its remote--I use my iPhone instead.