My mom got me a sweet surround sound system for my birthday and I pseudo set it up last night, but it's quite frustrating. For one thing, there are a ton of cables everywhere and I have to idea how to string the rear speakers without having wire draped all over the place. I suppose I could go into the ceiling and such, but I feel in my gut that there's some trick I'm missing.... Do people cut their carpet and run the wire underneath? Running wire across the ceiling would be pretty tacky.
Part of the problem may be that my TV and furniture aren't ideally positioned for my speaker system. If I rotate everything 90 degrees clockwise then I'll have two walls to run the wires along rather than having to span open space. That's a possibility, but then my couches would be in the center of the room and I like having a central open area. What a dilemma.
Anyway, here's a series of articles on how to set up surround sound speakers and a home theater system more generally.
When my big screen TV goes out I'm going to buy a projector to replace it rather than another TV. Combined with a good screen, a projector can look as good as a TV and be as large as you want. They're still a bit pricy, but they're getting cheaper and are comparable in price to good projection TVs.
Michael, its a little unorthodox, but here's what I do:
I get some "flat" Cat 5E or 6E Network cable. Inside are 8 wires. Double them up to get a decent wire thickness and you'll have 4. That's enough to send the signal to both rear surrounds. Bite the bullet and run that one cable under the carpet, breaking out your speaker lines from it as you need it.
Some people will say you need monster cable that's as thick as your thumb. Bull. That's a great selling point (its pricey), but its just not true. I regularly work out my Onkyo 6.1 system (600 watts),hooked up just the way I explained, and it sounds fabulous; no problems for 2 years now, and no messy wires.