Dethroner Asks You: Good Tricks for Hiding HDTV and Home Theater Cruft?
Published by Joel November 29th, 2006 in Gadgets. Share This
Have you done any special tricks to keep your HDTV and home theater gear from taking over your whole space? I’d show you my setup, but it’s not all that special—I use a projector in the living room, so when it’s off it’s just a wall (or the screen if I am too lazy to roll it up, which I often am).
My old neighbor and friend Nick London actually built an entire loft for the back end of their apartment, leaving a place below to recess his large CRT television to give the impression of something between a fireplace and a flat-panel TV. It was a very nice use of space.
If you’ve done anything to minimum the impact of your media consumption habits—especially anything involving construction and obfuscation—I’d love to see it. I’m especially interested in figuring out a way to deal with speaker wire when you can’t get into the walls and don’t have carpet to tuck it under. (Right now I’m just pushing it up next to the baseboards and tacking it in, which I suspect is as good as it’s going to get.)
Picture via This Old House.
Home Depot sells wire channels to route pesky cables. They come in different sizes and with right angle adaptors. They have self-adhesive backs to attach them to the wall. If you paint them the same color as the wall, they’re nearly invisible.
I wrestled with how to get surround speakers wired in my living room, and finally realized the crown molding was PERFECT. Pulled it down, ran it through my table saw to cut a 1/4″ groove for wire, stapled the wire up, and re-nailed the crown molding. Took a couple hours, but looks great and was much easier than the alternatives.
Another trick I see folks use a lot is the “fake warm air return”. Just cut into the drywall where you need to, run wires, then cover the hole with a grille. Naturally, match the height of your other returns/vents.
My current quandry is how to run HDMI cables from a media center into a wall. Should I use a faceplate and actually have an extra HDMI connector in the path, or just run the cable into a hole in the wall? Hmmmm. I’m thinking the latter at the moment.
We hung our flat screen TV over the fireplace and ran the wires down through the wall next to our chimney and under the mantlepiece. When we remodelled we installed a plug under the mantlepiece and made it removable. My boyfriend then ran all the cables through the attic from a closet nearby where we keep the cable box, DVD player, etc. There’s a relay for the remote in the heating vent. Here’s a picture:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennifergeorge/231314894/in/set-906670/
Watch out on your HDMI cable length!!!
http://www.hometoys.com/htinews/dec05/articles/accell/hdmi.html
I put my 8 amps in the crawl space under my family room and ran all the speaker wires down there.
I got the cure for what ails ya. Check this out
http://www.decorp.com/
Flat wire you can spackle and paint over. Completely invisible.
I rent so I was limited to what I could do. I ended up running the surround speaker wires up the wall and through the attic.
The components I am more satisfied with. I bought an old buffet, drilled some vent holes and piled everything in. The coolest thing I did was to buy a IR repeater so that I could operate everything with the doors closed.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dyamasaki/26677090/in/set-605417/
I want to hang a 50″ plasma above my fireplace. We have a full masonary fireplace (brick inside / drywall on the outside ). We currently have a reg. tv placed inside a entertainment center which also houses all the media (dvd, vcr, stereo tuner ect. ). The fireplace is accross the room. Where would all my equipment be be stored ? There are floor to celing windows on both sides of the fireplace / mantle. Also, any suggestions on how / where to run the cords ?
Do they make wirless cable/ and dvd players yet?
Thanks
Troy
Great Post. I have some similiar info on my Home theater website/magazine. I’m going to link to your blog from mine.
http://www.inflix.com
J