Having extension built: kitchen and open plan living room – its a big room: crying out for big screen and home cinema:)

Listen to a fair bit of music: currently using mp3 player plugged into stereos, loads of downloaded music and films on my desktop pc. Currently use freesat through a humax recorder box (top bit of kit BTW).

Need to get a new telly, laptop probably on its way. Got 3 kids so I guess they'll be doing a fair bit of gaming unless I can persuade them otherwise (a losing battle!)

Need to decide what cabling to put in before plasterboard goes on.

Obviously know about speaker cabling, but haven't got a clue about computer cabling: would be good to stream (if that's the right word) video from my pc, but is it just as easy plugging a laptop in?

Any sensible future-proofing I should be doing?

Check out this thread!

And Pedalheads' BatCave for inspiration!

Personally, unless hidden cables are a must, I'd use discrete conduiting, as any cables can then be easily accessed and changed if need be.

That Batcave hits my technogeek buttons!

Any idea on the cost of a half-decent projector / screen? 🙂

No reason why you can't lay conduits into the wall and then build over.

Run CAT5 everywhere, at least two strands to each room. It's dirt cheap and you can never have too much. Might find it useful to run a length to the loft / roof area and put a wireless router up there. Wall mounting the TV? Chances are a new one will want an ethernet connection.

Run the whole lot back to a convenient location. Doesn't matter if you terminate it there, but it's available should you need it. You cannot do HD streaming over WLAN no matter what the manufacturers would have you believe.

Plan ahead. Your TV needs six power sockets near it. Thinking about going to Sky in the future? Then run two cores of satellite quality co-ax to the TV so Sky don't f*** it up when they come round. All this stuff is a doddle to fit now, as opposed to afterwards.

Things like table lamps can go on their own 3A circuit linked to the lights.

Edit: DO NOT let the the bloke from here who's been on a Monster Cables salesman course have you believe that you need to buy expensive cables. You do not. Frankly, you could use lamp flex for speaker cables and never know, and 99% of CAT5 cable will take 1Gbps connections without any issue. Cable quality only becomes an issue over long runs.

Having said that, if you can afford it, cheap CAT6 is probably worth it purely for future proofing.

What Flaperon said, and I'd definitely go gigabit (CAT 5e & above, 6 if possible). Shifting hundreds of GB of media around is painful enough on 100Mb ethernet let alone using WLAN.

You've got a golden opportunity to shove any & all cables you think you might want in the future, behind your plasterboard. Personally, I went with the full works…multiple hdmi cables, IR distribution, bi-wire speaker cable, DVI to connect PC to projector, etc etc. Lots of power sockets are also a bonus too.

Have you considered lighting? As you're doing things from scratch, you could quite easily install something like a 4-circuit Lutron system which would give you tons of scene lighting options & general coolness/ambience. Have fun!

Oh, with regards to projector/screen…I'm a bit out of date (I built my room about 18 months ago), but good HD projectors were plummeting in price. Lots of things to consider though, so I'd definitely recommend doing some research on the AV Forums. Screen-wise, I always recommend Carada, a company based in the USA. I guess the exchange rate is against us these days, but they are superb for custom fixed screens at a reasonable price, and are super friendly too (assuming you can get away with aa fixed screen…if it's also a living room then perhaps not).