Advice on sending video and audio around my house ... ?

[Marcus Warrington]

Hi everyone..

Does anyone have any advice for me on sending video and audio
around my house ?

I'm presently having the house flood wired with Cat5 cable as
part of a rewire. Actually that WAS the idea, but the electrician
I'm using seems to know nothing about cat5 cabling (I caught him
folding and stapling it 90 degrees around joists etc) ,anyway we've
come to an arrangement were he will fixed and supplied the faceplates
and *I* will pull the wires. Each room will have a double face plate
(4 RJ45) and a single face plate (1 RF + 1 RJ45) mirrored in two
diagonal corner.. (so a total of 10 RJ45 and 2 RF in each room).
I was originally going to have 2 RF's in the single plates, one
for upload and one for download of video signals but having read
about Kat5 it seems a better (quality) and versatile system.. hence
one RF has been replaced by an RJ45.

I'm fairly new to all this but have been researching on the .net
for a few weeks now. I wish I'd started earlier and found out about
X10 stuff before the electrician finished the rewire. ( I'd have
made sure he put in a neutral wire to each light switch.. damn!)

Anyway, from what little I've learned I'm thinking the best way of
distributing the video and hi-fi around the house is to use some
form of TX/RX devices over the cat5 cable.. like the Kat5 devices :)
I've seen a couple of places mention sending full 5.1 audio over cat5
does Keith do (plan to do) anything like this or are the Kat5 just
for video ? Is it possible to split the TX signal so I can send the
same signal to 8 different rooms i.e. like I will be doing with the
TV signal via an 8way TV amplifier ?

Also what about IR control.. ideally I'd like a IR Rx in each room
routed back to node 0 and then patch to appropriate IR TX to control
the equipment.. be that in node0 or in another room in the house.
I assume this is all possible by having a TX/RX for IR in every room
(feeding through a cat5 cable). I'd then have a couple of Pronto's to
control everything :)

Does anyone know if its permissible to run RF cable next to Cat5 cable
in the same conduit around the house ? I know I cant run cat5 cable near
mains voltage cables but I'm not sure about how noisy RF is ?

If I can't use Kat5 for audio I'll have to run speaker wire to each room
..is this wire noisy (pardon the pun), can I run speaker wire in the same
conduit as cat5 and RF ?

Any advice would sure be appreciated.

Thanks

Marcus