Building New House should I bother wire it for TV and Sound

[Utern]

With the new wireless TV set tops and Bluetooth wireless speakers does anyone think that its still worth while to wire and entire house with Cat 5/6, Coaxial cable, speaker wires and HDMI?

 

[kanewolf]

ABSOLUTELY! I would recommend at least one coax and one etherent per room. Get your builder or installer to install something like Belden 7876S http/www.broadbandutopia.com/ban.html -- Single pull to a location to minimize labor cost and all the connectivity you should need for the near future.

These all come back to a single point (home run). Be sure to include a dedicated power circuit for this area. Also think about any place OUTDOORS you might want a camera. Have an ethernet cable pulled to those locations. You can then add POE (power over ethernet) cameras will almost no effort.

 

[avenseth12]

Without question yes. This will save you major headaches and people putting holes in your wall. Run Ethernet into every room even if you don't have a current need. They can run into a covered box with a blank plate on it and you may need it later.

 

[RealBeast]

Absolutely, at a minimum wire it with CAT5e or CAT6 (not 6A). Run a few extra lines to distant areas of the house and garage to use to attach wireless access points so that you have a real good wireless coverage.

Wireless does a very poor job with all the devices now in use because the bandwidth is so limited, so leave the wireless to connect phones, laptops and the like.

I would also run coaxial as it is cheap and easier to attach many TVs throughout the house.

If you want sound throughout, then run the sound cable (18ga lamp wire will do fine).

HDMI I consider optional unless you have already defined uses for it, as it does poorly over long runs and you can always just run an extra Ethernet cable and use HDMI over Ethernet adapters.