The wife & I are buying new furniture and I am rearranging the living room.

I will be placing the TV & speakers in different areas of the room. My problem lies here: the cables are hidden from view with the arrangement & furniture we have now but will be almost fully exposed with the new layout.

I need suggestions for hiding the cables. Cutting into the walls is out of the question and I really don't want to take up the carpet. What makes this difficult is the fact that the living room is rather large & it will take several feet of cable for the surround speakers.
Also, I will not have a wall to mount the surrounds so I've been thinking about suspending them from the ceiling but I don't know if the ceiling would support them efficiently, especially with active surround played loudly (i.e. pod race in Episode I).
I wouldn't go through all of this trouble but we really needed the new furniture and she made concessions when I first bought the home theater stuff so now it's my turn.

Any help would be appreciated.

If you have baseboard trim along the walls I would consider getting some thin wood strips (something in the shape of those metal strips that tack carpeting down at the edge of tile or linoleum (sp?)). I know they exist, but have no idea what they are called. You could stain them to match the current trim and run the cables under them. For the surrounds, I'm not big on hanging them from the ceiling. I'm more of a traditionalist and believe the tweeters should be at ear level when sitting. Buy a nice heavy pair of stands for those. I really like my Sound Organisations (that is the correct spelling). Good luck.

I should have mentioned that there is a fireplace in the way so I can't lay them along the floor. I will have to hang them high.

I've thought about buying stands and screwing/bolting them to the floor some way. Any suggestions for securing the speakers to the stands? I have a 6 year old boy and a rambunctious cat and would hate to have a speaker blown by sudden contact with the floor.

Maybe you could post some pics of the room layout?

I needed 122 ft of Monster XP for my two surrounds. It had to go over the sliding patio door!!!

You can try some of that flat Monster Cable the sell by the foot at Home Depot. Try to push it between your carpet and floorboard trim. Otherwise, take up the carpet, its not that hard to put it back. If you decide to go in the wall, fish the wire down from the attic with something rigid like clothes hangers. Good Luck!