Moving all my A/V boxes to one room

[MaximumJed]

I'm about to redecorate my main living room and one of the things that I would like to consider is moving everything out into another room, leaving me with only the screen and speakers on show. However, there seem to be plenty of methods but I'm not sure what to go with.

Currently got:
Pioneer Plasma with a seperate media box
PS3
xbox 360
Sky HD
Media Center PC custom built
Onkyo 507 amplifier (acts as an HDMI switch also)
KEF 3005se speakers

The media center is fed from some servers which are located upstairs which is where I would like to put everything else. I also have a screen, PS3 and another Media Center in another room which streams content from the servers but don't currently have access to Sky.

During the redecoration I want to sink cables into the walls and put in a projector so that I can switch to the big screen for movies/gaming.

Basically, the questions are; What is the best way to move these out of the room? I know I can run HDMI over Cat5 but is that the best/only way to distribute? Can I share my Sky HD to multiple screens? Should the amplifier go upstairs and only the speaker wire run to the room? If the PS3/xbox are downstairs, do I need two runs, one up to the amp and then back down to the TV etc? What is the best way to switch between TV and Projector?

Also I will need a decent remote, I had a Harmony 1000 which was pretty unreliable but I've been more impressed by the Harmony One so considering the 900 for the better button layout.

Sorry for the enormous questions, budget is probably up to £1,000 for the distribution stuff, depending on what it offers me.

[headcase]

How far are the cable runs likely to be? A decent quality HDMI lead is good for 20M, that should be quite long enough unless of course you live in a mahoosive house . For any devices that use removable media (XBOX/Blu-Ray) it may be better to keep those in the same room as the screen.

[MaximumJed]

Not sure if it is 20m, it's not a big house but going up 2 floors.

At the moment I am thinking of still keeping the systems seperate but upstairs, with HDMI over Cat5 for the various runs. Continue to use the amp for switching and lengthen the speaker cables. I'd like something that could do a bit more distribution but I don't think there is much in budget.

[allgonepetetong]

Definately possible as I have done it myself. As I understand it you want put all of your equipment together and add the necessary cables to your TV and speakers.

You mention you have 2 media centers, do you want to integrate these also or keep the systems seperate?

Does your Pioneer TV has a proprietry cable between media box and panel or is it a standard HDMI?

You can have 2 tv's to one sky box but you will have to watch the same chanel on both TVs.

My suggestion, and this is what I have doene is:

All equipment together (in my case under the stairs)
Logitech Squeezebox Duet for music
PS3 for streaming meia from NAS
Sky HD
Consider Sky multiroom if you want different chanels on both TVs
Logitech Harmony 1 remote
Powermid IR Extender (converts IR to radio and back again for equipment in another room)
10m proprietry cable between media box and Pioneer panel (running under floorboards)
Speaker cable under floors and chased into walls

Happy to help if you have further questions. I just spent a couple of evenings thinking about what I wanted and how to achieve it, there is really nothing complicated to it.

Edited by allgonepetetong on Tuesday 30th November 11:41