I don't know if this will help, but our living room has fairly wide built-ins to place the TV in and DVD player etc underneath in cabinets. I personally think this gives more room for other things and more window room for a good view of the back yard.
(We only have one living area.)
Best of luck finding a great plan.

Grrr... this is one of the things that drove my husband and I crazy when we were looking to buy an existing home. It seemed like 95% of the homes we looked at had a living room/family room where the fireplace was the main focal point and TV placement was an afterthought. Of course, our realtor suggested putting the TV above the fireplace, but we did not like that idea at all. So... now that we're building, we opted to put the fireplace in the corner of the room and now have a big wall for the TV. Seems like such a obvious "fix", but only a couple of the homes we saw had this type of configuration.

We designed and built our house to have the TV over the fireplace. It's on the opposite wall from the open kitchen, so easily visible while you're cooking and washing dishes or whatever. That was our personal preference.

There are all sorts of furniture pieces made to lift a TV form inside to viewing position.

They have even caught up to the flat screens.

A customer has one in front of a pair of windows.

It is a console unit, but it lifts up a rather large flat screen TV in front of the windows for viewing, and hides it completely when closed.

The issue is not necessarily that the fireplace is the focal point of the room. I see in a lot of house plans that there is very limited space for the TV, regardless of where the fireplace is.

Probably due to the great room concept and much of the time, the living room area of the great room only has two walls you can push stuff up against, and often times those walls are filled with windows. It just depends on the floor plan. It's actually better to have a decent space for the TV so you don't end up putting it somewhere that it sticks out like a sore thumb or you can see all the cords behind it, who wants to look at that!

In our current house (and in quite a few of old houses), the fireplace is actually in the dining room.

We hide our TV in the loft. No TV on the first floor which is the main social space. But we also buck the trend- average family owns four- and we only have one. No cable either... combination digital TV antenna (free after buying it for $60) for ABC, CBS, NBC , netflix for movies/ streaming video and hulu for the occasional series that we watch. Don't miss it, but hey- to each their own.

KC, the heart of my home is my Partner & I, our three dogs, and our two cats, not any possession, room, or electronic item.

I don't like the TV over the FP. While it can be offset by putting the FP off-center, FPs still suffer another problem. Old fashion FPs waste more energy than they save. New FPs and modern construction methods quickly overheat a room. I'll probably get rid of the FP, when the room is redone. I can always run a video loop of a FP on my TV if I need the ambiance (when I not watching Jerry Springer and Wrestling).

V if I need the ambiance (when I not watching Jerry Springer and Wrestling).

LOL Chris. Too funny.

The main reason we'd like to keep a a traditional and functional fireplace (i.e. real wood) is because we would like to be able to heat at least a portion of the house if the power goes out in winter. We live in an area that gets a ton of snow and occasionally power will be out for an extended amount of time and going to stay with Mom and Dad is no fun. Plus, on a more downbeat note, who knows if civilization will crumble...We would be able to heat our house then! Of course, that may be the least of our worries in that unlikely event...

Just because you put some thought into TV placement and useage does not mean that you are glued to it 10 hours a day. I actually prefer to read most of the time, but it's hard to read while cooking, washing dishes or rocking babies. Or folding laundry. We have 1 TV in our house, to keep family members from going off by themselves to watch it. So the TV is in the main living area where we all hang out. Same with the one computer: we built an area into our kitchen (which is open to the living room) so that no one would be a hermit on the computer and we could keep up with what the kids are doing. Having a special place for the computer doesn't mean we're computer addicts, just that we put some thought into how it would be used and how we want to raise our kids.

JMO...
V

It's interesting how often this subject comes up on the GardenWeb and how personally people take the comments.

Every family is different which is why every house is different which is why designing houses is so difficult. The only reason I can get through the process is that I only have to listen to one couple's opinions and eventually a solution is found that suits their needs but doesn't look like an awkward compromise but it's never quick, simple or obvious.

No one should expect to find good ready made design solutions on an internet forum. You're lucky if you see something that takes you a step further toward your goal. Obviously, many people don't like the way other people live and some of them can't resist making comments to that effect. It's like having an endless string of in-laws. A competent designer is never judgmental but that doesn't apply to spectators so free design advice is often worth what you paid for it.

We had this same issue when looking at floor plans. The plan that we ended up choosing had the FP on the wall where I would have put the TV so we moved it to the wall going out to the rear deck. Only drawback is you lose some windows and maybe some natural light. Once nice benefit is we changed the FP for a double sided unit so we could use it on the enclosed rear deck in the winter.

Here are some pictures.