Here's my dilemna. My room is completely finished and drywalled. I want to put a dedicated theater in that room. I have the option of running wires in a molding that is paintable and I would have to put it around the whole room. Another option is to do a crown molding and hide the wires in there. Now if its the latter. do I punch a hole in the top of the wall (crown molding would hide where the wire/cable goes into the wall) between the studs and then fish the wire down to the bottom of the wall and bring the wire out to the speaker or speaker terminal mounted on the wall? I was reading something in Home Theater magazine that said something about not running your wires down along the studs but through the studs which would mean I would have to rip up my whole drywall which I am not going to do. Maybe running that molding (wiretracks) towards the bottom of the wall is going to be my best bet if I cannot run wires down the space between the studs. One of the walls is an exterior wall so I would have to deal with trying to fish wire through the insulation which sounds like a possible mess.

Ive been doing a ton of research and reading these forums in preparation for my install...I just want to get the ball rolling! LOL!

The room is in the basement and I don't have a crawl space to get up above that room. I would be interested in hearing from others that have built theaters in already finished rooms to see how you did all the wiring.

Bring it down the wall between the studs but you might not want to go all the way to the floor. Bring it down to a point directly behind where the speaker will be mounted and let the speaker hide the place where it exits the wall.

As for fishing wire in an insulated wall, you want to bring it down between the insulation and the drywall not in the insulation. With a wire fishing tape once you get it started at the top it should just slide down. Most often you will have a kraft paper covering on the insulation. Side the fishing tape (Make sure you have a doubled over blunt leading the way) between the paper and the drywall.

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Big hit it on the head. I had the same dilemma. The room I was using for a dedicated theater was already sheet rocked and I didn't feel like tearing it all apart to redo. I ran crown molding along the top, punched a hole behind the molding and behind the speaker, and fish taped the wire through the wall. I would highly recommend putting up a pvc pipe behind the molding (if you can), to run the wires through though. I didn't and when the theater was finished about 6 months later HDMI came on real strong, and I had to pull down most of the crown to replace my component with an HDMI cable.

You could also build sofits as well. This is the route I am going in my theater update. This will allow a lot more options and you don't have to tear apart any sheetrock, just add some more. :D

I went from the bottom up on mine, I was painting and replacing carpet so I pulled my baseboards up and I am going to run my cables behind the baseboard. I would of liked to go the crown molding way, but crow didn't really work in my room in the basement, my basement windows run right to the finished ceiling height and I didn't like the way the crown molding look running in front of them, plus I find that crown modling can make a short room look shorter and I think my finished basement looks short enough already.

I was easily able to fish my wires up a couple of feet to run them into my equipment, but I haven't tried fishing them up to my shelf mounted projector yet... the long term plans may be to build permanent shelving against my back wall in which case I can avoid the fishing all together back there.

Either way works - crown or baseboard wire channel. You can go with both crown and baseboard and use one of them for electrical and the other for low voltage. Tip: put your holes right next to the stud if possible - this gives you a channel in the right angle corner between the stud and drywall, and if there is insulation in the wall, usually there is a gap at the corner. Makes it easier to fish than if the holes are cut in random places between the studs.

Thanks alot everyone that chimed in!!!