Steve Jones wrote:

But which cable? In 15 years time, will a Dixons shop assistant laugh
at me when I tell him that I want to run his megabandwidth HDTV over a
CAT5e cable?
Yes.

The world is going wireless.

Save yourself all the hassle and buy some 54Mb wireless networking gear and
some DECT 'phones.

Yes, but forget wireless at your "core". If you have the chance to
get your house wired properly then do that. Wireless is great for
convenience and no doubt you will put in a wireless access point as
well, but I *guarantee* that you will *truly* regret not putting down
a few wires if you have the chance to do so.

I have three wireless access points at my house, two Linksys WRT54GS
running firmware from www.sveasoft.com for my "home" network, and a
Cisco Aironet 350 connected to a Cisco 3002 VPN router for my "work"
connectivity, and I can seamlessly switch between the two from my
PC while sitting in my comfortable couch in my livingroom (different
SSIDs and channels). While I can stream MP3s and XVID movies over the
..11g home network, it's inadequate for other video formats like for
streaming video from my Nebula TV server (www.nebula-electronics.com)
to other PCs in my house.

Unfortunately when my house was refurbished the developer did not have
the foresight to wire my place properly, and this is really biting me
now. So in the very near future I will be starting the somewhat messy
job of cutting plasterboard walls and lifting floorboards to be able
to even get gigabit speeds to wherever I would need it.