Is prewiring for HT in a new home worth the money? (apartment, condo)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hi,
I am buying a new home now. The prewiring for 5.1 home theater in the house is priced as about 600 bucks. I plan to put $900 for both A/V receiver and 5.1 speakers. Is the prewiring money worth or nor? And is it a trouble if I just do the wiring by my self after I move in? Thanks for any suggestion.
It depends on a few things, in my "intermediate" home theater experience:
First and foremost, I hate to see pre-wirings that limit the arrangement of the room. In other words, the wires are run in a such a way that you can only set your furniture up one way for the rest of your life (or until you abandon or change the pre-wiring). Never assume that you'll only set your furniture one single way.
If the house is on a crawl space or has an attic above the room being considered for pre-wiring, I would pass on it. It will be easy to run the wires yourself later on when you get moved into the house and settled. If the room is on a slab and has a second floor above it, then it will be much harder to wire discretely without cutting drywall.
There's always the wireless theater setups nowadays. They're a little more pricey, but less than the $600 you're being quoted to prewire. They even make them as an add-on piece to use with any theater system...like this: Click Here
Maybe I'm too froogle with my money and/or too much of a DIY'er...but I just don't like to see pre-wiring done. My main beef is that it binds you to one or two setups for the life of the room. I liek to be able to rearrange my furniture and not be limited by the $600 committment of pre-placed wires. Just my opnion though...many folks love it (the pre-wiring, not my opinion!).
It depends on a few things, in my "intermediate" home theater experience:
First and foremost, I hate to see pre-wirings that limit the arrangement of the room. In other words, the wires are run in a such a way that you can only set your furniture up one way for the rest of your life (or until you abandon or change the pre-wiring). Never assume that you'll only set your furniture one single way.
If the house is on a crawl space or has an attic above the room being considered for pre-wiring, I would pass on it. It will be easy to run the wires yourself later on when you get moved into the house and settled. If the room is on a slab and has a second floor above it, then it will be much harder to wire discretely without cutting drywall.
There's always the wireless theater setups nowadays. They're a little more pricey, but less than the $600 you're being quoted to prewire. They even make them as an add-on piece to use with any theater system...like this: Click Here
Maybe I'm too froogle with my money and/or too much of a DIY'er...but I just don't like to see pre-wiring done. My main beef is that it binds you to one or two setups for the life of the room. I liek to be able to rearrange my furniture and not be limited by the $600 committment of pre-placed wires. Just my opnion though...many folks love it (the pre-wiring, not my opinion!).
Thanks for your advice. My new house does have Crawl foundation and I plan to put HT in my family room which is on the first floor. So I guess I don't need the prewiring.
I will add to what Steve said about the wireless home theater set-ups: I know a few people that have had them. Some work great, but one friend had issues of the system picking up "noise" from another source. From what I've read, if you are in a townhouse or apartment / condo, you may run into the noise issue more (i.e. the further you are away from neighbors, the better).
We had pre-wiring down in our house for the HT system. But we have an entire room dedicated as a home theater and we knew how we wanted to lay it out ahead of time, so we didn't mind having it done (plus its on the 1st floor with a slab underneath). I get your point Steve, about being limited in terms of moving furniture around later, but I'm one of those folks that would do a whole lot more than $600 worth of damage to the structure of my house if I tried to do it myself.
But yeah, it depends on how handy you are and if you have the crawlspace option. Although, depending on the quality of the wires and speakers used, $900 is not too unreasonable.
I have done this a few times and you could go either way. On a crawl space it is easier.. but not everyone wants to do this. First, it's not that easy when walls are completed. A few points to consider.
1. Find out what quality wiring they are using
2. What type of jacks they will be using. This is key for subwoofer components as some use Coax, S-cables, etc.
3. I would actually get "wired" for 7.1 Especially with HD TV, Blue Ray and now HD sound, you may see some nice 7.1 systems out there.
4. As others have said don't get anything wired that will limit you. You may only have one REAl space for the TV so that may use that. But I like Junction boxes and pre-wiring junction boxes is the best way to do things. Plan for things like Surge supressors, plugs, routers, gaming machines, entertainment counsels, etc. Also make sure where you may put receivers or anything with infrared that you can access that point form your remote. I have seen people prewire cabinets, but they have to open to doors to use any of the equipments. (We ended up replacing the doors with glass doors, which looks nice but PITA!.
5. No matter what get extra wiring. If you have a TV point (main place for tv which will be the main hub of wiring), everything will come from that, and go under the house. Many times they won't put much or any slack in the wiring. This may seem reasonable, but the wiring itself is not expensive. Have them keep an extra 20 feet or so wiring for each line, so you can move them easily enough. Easy enough to tack the extra wiring to a beem and keep it out the way. (you cannot splice/extend audio cable, ((ok you can but your sound is then is crap)))
6. Look at other areas you may want sound, this is key for outside, if you want to put outside speakers out at anytime. This won't cost much more to do if it's done at the same time. Also look at your computer pre-wiring, not just HD. And even so, GET ETHERNET near your TV!!!
7. Again, look at all possible options for cabling. I again like junction boxes in a closet. These have surge supressors, places for modems and routers. They have ethernet ports into and out of. And exapanability.
Ok thats my 2 cents (or 7 cents). But finally, find out who is doing it. If it's the guy that builds the frames.. Eh.. See if you can bring in your own people. I help my sister and cousin do it. It's not tough, but they had builders that allowed it.
If *I* was building my house, *I* would pre-wire everything, using quality wires. If it was a builder putting in the wiring, I may have second thoughts.
I have done this a few times and you could go either way. On a crawl space it is easier.. but not everyone wants to do this. First, it's not that easy when walls are completed. A few points to consider.
1. Find out what quality wiring they are using
2. What type of jacks they will be using. This is key for subwoofer components as some use Coax, S-cables, etc.
3. I would actually get "wired" for 7.1 Especially with HD TV, Blue Ray and now HD sound, you may see some nice 7.1 systems out there.
4. As others have said don't get anything wired that will limit you. You may only have one REAl space for the TV so that may use that. But I like Junction boxes and pre-wiring junction boxes is the best way to do things. Plan for things like Surge supressors, plugs, routers, gaming machines, entertainment counsels, etc. Also make sure where you may put receivers or anything with infrared that you can access that point form your remote. I have seen people prewire cabinets, but they have to open to doors to use any of the equipments. (We ended up replacing the doors with glass doors, which looks nice but PITA!.
5. No matter what get extra wiring. If you have a TV point (main place for tv which will be the main hub of wiring), everything will come from that, and go under the house. Many times they won't put much or any slack in the wiring. This may seem reasonable, but the wiring itself is not expensive. Have them keep an extra 20 feet or so wiring for each line, so you can move them easily enough. Easy enough to tack the extra wiring to a beem and keep it out the way. (you cannot splice/extend audio cable, ((ok you can but your sound is then is crap)))
6. Look at other areas you may want sound, this is key for outside, if you want to put outside speakers out at anytime. This won't cost much more to do if it's done at the same time. Also look at your computer pre-wiring, not just HD. And even so, GET ETHERNET near your TV!!!
7. Again, look at all possible options for cabling. I again like junction boxes in a closet. These have surge supressors, places for modems and routers. They have ethernet ports into and out of. And exapanability.
Ok thats my 2 cents (or 7 cents). But finally, find out who is doing it. If it's the guy that builds the frames.. Eh.. See if you can bring in your own people. I help my sister and cousin do it. It's not tough, but they had builders that allowed it.
Good luck and welcome to HD!
Appreciate your detailed suggestion!
The price quote is from a large and reputable company who is recommended by the builder. They are in charge of all wirings in my house, including TV cable, computer wiring, telephone wiring, and many others. Most of the wirings are already included in our house price. The prewiring of HT is optional and about 600 for 5.1. Probably I will not take it.
If it were me and building my house and I was positive I knew where I wanted everything, I would prewire it myself in the middle of the night, and then claim ignorance. The drywallers don't care. $600 for $40 worth of wire is nuts.
I didn't prewire mine because I had an odd shaped room and it doesn't conform 5.1 that well (tv in corner of room)
We purchased a model home in July that was pretty well set up with structure wiring for phone, ethernet and tv using cat5e and rg6 to all the rooms, run to a central wire closet. In addition, the living room had a prewired component video receptacle over the fireplace so that a panel TV mounted there could be fed by a remote cable box, and the bonus room has a surround sound patch panel and ceiling mounted 5.1 speakers and a sub.
We probably wouldn't have purchased the home theater stuff as options ourselves, but I'm sold on the idea of structure (or premise) wiring for phone/tv/internet - my point in replying is that you can probably do the HT stuff yourself after the fact, but by all means have your house set up with a central wiring system before it is built! It will save you $$ and headaches in the long run.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
