Our New A/V Closet

Since I’m obviously a geek among geeks, I kind of take pride in having my own personal A/V closet in our new place. The first floor of our duplex is one big open space and there’s a very shallow closet in what would be the living room. It would be perfect for a pantry except it’s too far from the kitchen. Instead, we had a closet company (ask us if you want to know which one) come in and install some shelving so we could make some use out of the space.

I had already had our builder run the in-ceiling speaker wire, cable and HDMI cables through the top of the closet. Then we had the right shelves notched with wire pass-throughs in them. The power’s on the left side but you can barely tell there’s a black cable running behind the cook books over there.

As for the technical stuff, all is the same as previously reported except I found a good deal on eBay for the Monster Power HTS 2600 MKII. The thing is badass looking for a glorified surge protector. Oh, and I had to get an upconverting DVD player because I didn’t know you had to have one to play DVD’s through an HDMI connection. I just thought the picture wouldn’t be as good. Live and learn.

Still have the Logitech streaming music player coming today and a RF remote tomorrow so we can actually control everything with the closet doors closed. I’ll report more on that when they come in. We also had the TV lowered about three inches from before.

So, how does it all work? "Smallville" last night sounded great. Unfortunately there weren’t a ton of special effects going on. I also tested "Star Trek: First Contact" on DVD and it sounded awesome. With the in-ceiling speakers though, you can hear the whole thing in our bedroom upstairs. Oops. 

Pictured: You can see the closet door cracked to the right, behind our new couch.

Comments

[barbara Patti]

David
Good to see your space - who is Jeff Zucker?
\
Love Mom

[Jim]

Looks awesome! How do you like the lighting above the TV? Any suggestions on the subject?

[wireless surround sound speakers]

Thanks for the input on the New A/V Closet.

[car dvd players]

I could really use DVD player and i am sure someone in the family would like the DVD.

[jordan 12]

Good posts you wrote,many ideas I got from it,hope better in the future.

[jordan 12]

Good posts you wrote,many ideas I got from it,hope better in the future.