Running living room cabling, what type of wiring and how many to prepare for future

[sosnpk]

I opened up an finished channel of my new to me house this weekend to run my satellite rg6 connection, while I have it open I wanted to run all the wiring that I would need for the future. I am going to put a new box in the location to give it a clean place to tie in the new connections. Right now at a minimum I am going to run:

1 length of Romex for a new outlet
2 cat5e cables for ethernet
Speaker wire (what kind and how many wires?)

If you were me what else would you run and what subsitutions would you make for the above.

Are the surge suppression receptacles any good and should I look into using these for the power?

Right now I have a 32 inch wega with Replaytv channel skipping DVR, DVD, and Satellite. Looking to upgrade to hd plasma soon.

[kactuskid]

You can buy a structured wire bundle that has the coax and the Cat5 all included in one cable. This link will give you the details about it
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/know...197963,00.html

I installed Monster cable for my speaker wires and it's been very good thus far, here's another link that'll tell you all about it. The 4 conductor size would be the best.
http://www.hometech.com/learn/audio2.html

And you don't want to run an AC line (romex) within the same cavity as your low voltage wires. The two types of cables need to be at minimum 1-2 feet apart to prevent interferance.

And here's an excellent article on wiring your home for low voltage and how to run the cables.
http://www.wildtracks.cihost.com/homewire/

[HayZee518]

As Kactus pointed out The are cables out there that are CAT 5E or better. There are some that have TV cables within, telephone and some, fiber optic in the same bundle. About the CAT-5E when you place the cables do not make a sharp right angle when changing directions, make a "flowing" turn. Don't use metal staples to hold it in place - use the plastic coax fasteners. Don't run them parallel to power cables. Keep at least two feet away. Do not run within a pipe or pvc with power circuits. Running parallel even if the coax is shielded will induce an AC hum within the conductor and is impossible to remove.

[dugan]

you should run an extra rg6.( maybe even one more for an off air antenna for local hdtv channels ) most new dvr sat box's need 2 so you can record 1 ch and watch 1.ch. 2 cat 5 es now depending on where your spearkers and system are locaded is how many wires you will need. use a 16 gauge 2 pair for each speaker. Make sure you isolate the romax low voltage does not like high voltage. As far as the plasma, if its at the location of your box you'll be ok. if you hang it on the wall you'll need some special cables. consult the manual. what i do is over wire it ( and leave a pull string )