Jay Chan wrote:

[snip]
Besides, the wall color is white. This should be very easy to match
color.

You are in for a rude surprise when you try to match the white unless
you have some of the original paint. You will have to repaint the
entire wall to get it to match, but not the whole room.

The first floor has wood-looking panel in the wall (instead of wall
paper as mentioned in my original post; I dis-oriented myself and got
confused with the opposite side of the house). I should be able to
remove the panel and put it back afterward. If there is fire-stop
block in the way, I should have no problem drill a hole through it
after I open up the panel.

I've run some romex from the basement to the attic through the bathroom
wall. By taking out the medicine cabinet, I was able to get to the fire
stops (the rough frame-in for the medicine cabinet *was* the firestop.)
This is not where I wanted the wires, but it was the only place I could
run them easily -- a few hours of my frustration is worth more than an
extra 20 feet of romex.

And I don't have a closet in the area that I want to run wire, and I
don't have a chimney in my house. I would have to run wire through
the wall. This doesn't sound like a big deal now that I know the wall
has wood-looking panel instead of wall paper. If the wall was covered
with wall paper as what I originally thought, I would abandon this
project if I found fire-stop inside the wall because I don't want to
deal with re-doing the wall paper in the room.

I try to avoid using wireless because there is not enough margin of
success if I use wireless to stream video. I am afraid that wireless
will likely not be good enough if I need to stream video to two
locations at the same time (one in the first floor, another one in
the basement). Currently, I will likely only need to stream video to
one location. But I can see the possibility of wanting to stream
video to two locations. I need something that has a bit more headroom
for future expanded need. This is the reason why I don't want to go
wireless.

Moreover, my experience with wireless stuff (a wireless headphone) is
not that great. This discourages me from trying other wireless
stuff.

My PC only has a 100MB network card and the media-player that I am
interested to get only supports 100MB connection anyway. After saying
this, I am still planning to put cat-6 cable just in case gigabit
network cards comes down in price. The price difference between cat-5
and cat-6 cables is not that big anyway.

I understand that using wire instead of wireless network can cost
more because the cable itself can cost a lot ($69 for a 50-ft cat-6
cable as seen in CompUSA, and I need at least two). But cost is a
lesser concern than getting a reliable signal for streaming video.

You can buy bulk cable at Home Depot and add your own connectors.

I can see the benefit of using a mix of wired and wireless
connections. I will go for wired network for now. And I will put in
wireless connection when I find the need to do so.

When you buy a hub or router look for one that has both ethernet and
wireless, even if you don't use the wireless part yet. (Disable it to
keep neighbor kids off of you network.) I've seen wireless routers with
a built-in 4-port ethernet switch for about the same price as just an
ethernet router.