Chaddy - If you are building a home now is the time to do the wiring. There is an article on the site as well as several posts on pre-wiring homes. Things to consider and ideas. Before drywall goes up, this is your time to get the wiring in. Consider all the areas you may want to put some special TV viewing in place or some speakers up for whole house audio.
Yes, the budget may not be there yet to buy stuff, but the wiring should be done now and conduit should be run if you want easy access to add more later.
The cost difference? Well, it was 3 times the standard labor time to run wiring after construction through a wall without access. Twice as much if there was access just due to dealing with drywall at all. So, it will be about 1/3 as expensive to run the wiring now as opposed to later.
Plasmas, projectors, and TVs all need wiring run to them and speakers all need to be pre-wired to prevent having to cut holes in the wall later.
MORE ON SUBJECT:
1. Is the home theater using a projector or something else for video reproduction? Details please + budget
2. Why in the world, in a dedicated theater, would you degrade audio quality by going with in-wall/ceiling speakers? There are good in-wall/ceiling speakers, but not at your budget really. At your budget, your money would be better utilized on bookshelf, on-wall, or floor standing speakers. Unless it's your family room as well, I would go with the best sounding speakers money could afford me.
3. The location of the speakers is dependent on room layout, but there is an excellent guide on this site that I would take a look at first for locations to run wiring to.
4. Run decent wiring in the room, if the contractor (whoever it is), has their own wire, find out what it is first before you are stuck with 18 gauge wiring in place.
5. For comparison, I spent about $3K on wiring in my home. But, the theater area (family room) was about $500.00 only and I made darn sure to pull conduit to both my plasma as well as my projector locations.
6. What is your timeline?
7. Where are you building? You may get some other references to good A/V help in your area if you let us know.
8. Who is your builder? Is this custom or a pre-fab design in a community? Many builders will not allow outside contractors to touch the home. Basically, they own the home until you settle, so if an outside contractor cuts a hole through a support beam they weren't supposed to, the builder is liable. Not something they often are willing to allow.
9. If it matters, then careful planning now will save you headaches down the road.
