re: New construction - run coax?

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Beyond all of the previous suggestions, you might even consider a nice conduit / pull-box run for a few central spots: media center, office, wiring closet.

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This is the best solution, no one knows what will be available in 10 years. If the house will have attic access over most of the rooms, run a plastic conduit from your in wall boxes up through the top wall plate leaving enough in the attic to extend above any insulation. Cat, fiber, coax, speaker wire can be easily added or removed as needed. Doing it yourself should only cost about 3 bucks per wall drop, 1 1/2 inch PVC will be fine.

I'd do a larger conduit than 3/4". You can't fit shite through that.

ETA: I do this for a living.

Did this two years ago. Coax to every room for TV, several CAT 6 to every location a TV or device MIGHT go. Also ran CAT 6 to the attic (for a high-up AP) and to the corners of the house and porches for security cameras. All terminates in a closet that has CAT- 6 and Coax to the outside where the Internet providers will have their demark. No regrets, and looks of admiration from the neighbors.

If I had thought of it, I would have buried a CAT 6 out to the overpriced mailbox for a surveil camera there too!

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Coax is cheap. If your walls are open I’d run it.

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this

We're doing the same on the residential prewires we're doing.

I still can't believe that I got back into residential. We're doing prewires for three A/V companies here.

Thanks for all the replies. Am planning to run 2 Cat 6 to every bedroom, and 4 to the living & game rooms. Will also run coax as well. Didn't think I needed it, but I think all of the affirmatives have let me know that I should go ahead and do it. Also, looking at smurf tube or pvc. Likely 3/4 - 1 inch in most rooms and bigger in the rooms with more cables.

Do I need to go ahead and run HDMI as well? Started searching on monoprice for all of the cables, connections, switches, etc. and my bill has racked up quite nicely.

Also, any good places to look for smurf tub? Seems pretty expensive when compared to the actual cables when I look it up. Home Depot has it for $70 for 100 feet. I'm ordering 2000 feet of cable (and yes I realize that I can put multiple in one line), but, damn that gets expensive.

I ran to every room of my houseto a central location in my attic. I installed a lomg range antenna up there. The only reason I did this was just in case of Mother Nature knocking out power for an extended period of time. I also pre wired my house to hook up a generator to my house panel. Living through the aftermath of hurricane Gustav and not having any tv to watch was miserable. To me that is the only advantage to running coax. Especially if it is new construction now is the time to do it. Even if you never use it, it’s nice to know I have that option if necessary. One other thing. If you pre wire for a generator make DAMM sure you have a way to isolate the main feed coming into your house.

What size would you recommend? From what I have read, you can only drill a hole with a diameter of 40% of the board if it’s a load bearing wall. This ends up being 1” tubing. I was thinking of running two 1” tubes behind each tv.

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Why three?

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HDMI, Ethernet, Spare/control

You can buy structured wire that’s already bundled with the cats and coax.

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For the main TV watching areas I was doing 4 each. 1 for TV, 1 for XBox, 1 for DVD player (not completely necessary), and then 1 extra for another system.

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If you think wire is expensive wait to you started buying the baluns to convert all those. Like VA mentioned typically you would use just one cat for HDMI with some type of video distribution.