By using a spigot on the house, you have all of the drop through the meter accounted for. If you tap in the yard, by the meter can, you will actually have a bit more pressure. You drop pressure through every turn in the piping from the meter to the spigot. This will eliminate multiple that are in the house. Your flow rate is a huge factor in your friction loss in the piping you use.
This chart is very helpful in determining how to lay out your system.
http://www.irrigation.org/uploadedFiles/PDF_Documents/IA_Friction_Loss_Charts.pdf
Mind you the loss listed is per 100 foot of pipe, but if you plan your runs accordingly, you will see that you won't drop too much if you keep your flows as low as possible. If you have 40 psi at the tap and run 500 feet to a head through 1" schedule 200 pipe you will have 38 PSI at the head if you are flowing 5 GPM out that head. Knock the flow down to 2 GPM and you have 39.65 PSI at the head.
Hunter makes the MP Rotator, which is a low flow head that uses a 4" pop up spray body. You can get those 4" sprays with PRS, which will regulate the pressure out the head to a fixed PSI, so long as you have the pressure at the head. Hunter makes the PRS with different pressure outputs, 30 and 40 psi. Rainbird makes a 4" PRS head with a 30 PSI output. Use those along with some math and a system is more than designable. It's going to have many more zones than your friends, but it's certainly doable if you want to spend the money.