Mr Psycho's settling down

everett_psycho

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After spending what feels like forever on this forum oggling everyone elses setups and being rather envious finally we have a home to call our own. Being our first home together me and my girlfriend have decided that at 25 enough is enough of hand me downs and are going all out to make this flat our own. So to the background information.

At the start of December my girlfriends boss left his job and the flat that came with it, since then she has been acting up in the role and we have been living there, but until last week it was a temporary arrangement so we couldn't progress with things at all, only speculate about what could be. Finally they have been impartial and she's earnt the job so we get to stay in the flat for as long as we like.

So to it so far. Here is the plan of action as it stands right now (excuse the 3 cubes in the middle of the room and the hollow space , they are meant to be sofas and a fireplace but i'm not good enough on google sketch to draw those in)



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So the plan here is the following kit:

LG 50PK590
Onkyo TX-SR308
Canton Movie 120MX
Humax HD-Fox-T2 (Withh WD elements hard drive)
LG BDP360
Xbox 360 Elite + HD-DVD drive
Wii
Logitech harmony 515

So far we have all the kit list I just need to finish the furniture, the last units should be arriving via dad couriers from ikea tomorrow :D Unfortunately the sofas we have on order will be another 8 weeks so we are stuck with the horrendous floral ones left by our predecessors, once they arrive we will add a coffee table to match and it should all be nice and cosy.

I'll update later in the week with some photos of what we've had until now and where we are at then.
 

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plans look very nice indeed, congrats to you and your partner on her success, especially in the current climate. Dont forget to update the thread, ive subbed.
 
thanks for the offer bartholin but i won't waste your time, the sketch was really done as both practice and for this thread more than our benefit. As good as it is my girlfriend prefers to see things in the flesh and use her imagination to picture it and other than the sofas it's should be mostly done by tonight. It is actually roughly to scale (i don't have the exact measurements just what we deemed the largest size we could fit in as cut offs), plus i have no idea what the sofa meaasurements are and the fireplace is crazily detailed as it's actually part of a national trust collection.

I'll post some photos later today when i get time to pull them off the camera

if you really want to though i can post another one of the sketches with the photos later and add some dims on for you
 
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Congrat's. Looking forward to seeing the final result.
 
Right photo time so far.

This is what we have had since early december:

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They were taken saturday morning pre shopping (post celebratory drinks which explains the mess and empty wine glasses/beer tin)

This is with my old LG 32LT75, the humax freeview hd, old pro xbox and a sony HTSS1100 for the temporary surround.

Since then I've got the rest of my kit as per the OP and a new unit to stick it on, so this is how we stand at this moment in time

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Looks nicer already, the final 2 units from the plans should be in tonight i hope. Still lots of tinkering and it is still messy. Once we have all the units and I've done some testing on the mains to see if homeplugs will work i'll get a shift on adding all this lot to our network and once i have that all ready i'm aiming to slap some trunking down the back of the unit to hide the mess of cables.

Annoyingly we can't add to nails in the walls or stick stuff up so i'm having to work around these rules to find ways of trailing cables unseen. We've also been promised a paint job in the next couple of months so it could change yet, my main concern though is to replace those horrible sofas, but thats just a matter of waiting for ours to arrive
 

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Very nice. Not a bad white unit too. Like it.
 
Thats a great improvement already. And I see what you mean about the pk590 looking massive, think its mainly because you went from a 32" straight to the 50". Worrying thing is you get used to the size of the things so quick and wonder if you could have gone a bit bigger.

Look forward to seeing the rest.
 
I think space wise we could have got a lot bigger, the wall the Tv is against is 4 meters from that corner to the window bay and we are sat about 3-4 meters away. If we could mount a projector and screen i would have gone down that route instead but i think 50 inch is the biggest swmbo would agree to, surprising how she now likes having the big TV now it's there :D I'm already getting used to it, doesn't look so big after 1 night and now we have the cabinets at either end it takes a bit of the onus off the set.

It's starting to feel like it's our flat now though and not the guys who lived there before us. The last real trace of their flat is those sofas and coffee table as every other bit of furniture belongs to us
 
Thought i'd update a bit. It's still coming along, the internet is switched on later today so i need to get to running some ethernet cables (they are still on the floor in these pictures). Once they are done the trunking that was in front of the unit going to get cut down to the right length and nailed to the back of the unit along the top and bottom and everything be rewired to hide that spaghetti mess that's there at the moment. The subs also being move to the corner, it's not staying on top of the unit. Other than that the units are now pretty much done for the main AV set up and we can start fillinf them with junk. So to the piccys:

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and finally with the main lights out:

GEDC0406.jpg


All in all it's, well it's massive. The units are over 3 1/2 meters accross but so far it's nice. SWMBO will be happy once the mess of cable is reduced and the cables i keep leaving in front of the units on the floor have actually been plugged in.

Once i'm done here I can turn my attentions to the rest of the flat, we need a better desk in our study and i want to find a way of getting freeview reception in the bedroom using an indoor aerial that has to face away from the transmitter. That's on the old 32" TV which currently only has the old white xbox plugged in to it

edit: I'm not sure what's causing the crazy stretched page here either, if anyone has any idea can you let me know and i'll edit it to make it nice again
 
I love the symetry of this set up. Very nice matey!

Those wires were just like mine until I had my OCD bro in law come and stay!! He is a demon with cable ties!!

Good job. I bet it is nice having your own space
 
I love the symetry of this set up. Very nice matey!

Those wires were just like mine until I had my OCD bro in law come and stay!! He is a demon with cable ties!!

Good job. I bet it is nice having your own space

that's my dads method, if it wasn't a wood cabinet i might try it but as it's white the trunking should be inconspicuous, then any stray cables may end up secured by the use of a stapled down cable tie. I like them to be accessible though, too many times have i had to undo my dads handywork and almost cut through scart leads by accident.

It's nice to have the slightly bigger units at each end, they mask the size of the TV a bit, but with the room being the size it is a 50 inch TV isn't too big anymore. The real test is when the in laws come up tomorrow and see it, her mum hates big TV's :rolleyes:

On a bit of a whim yesterday I also thought ordering these would be a good idea for convenience and to save a bit of power:

Brennenstuhl Energy Efficient Remote Control Mains: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

We've got a standby saver but i've had trouble with it and the harmony getting along and end up with the power not turning on in time and having to redo the activity only for it to turn the power back off, so i might move that to the bedroom where there is no harmony to get involved. We'll see if these things actually help at all or if they end up demoted to another room like the standby saver.

Fingers crossed over the weekend I can get all my recabling done, i'd like to do it tonight though to mask the mess from the inlaws in a vain attempt to impress them :D
 
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HIDE IT!! always the best method!

Saying that though, the same bro in law that is handy with cable ties also is a sound engineer and he did wonders when doing the cables keeping the power leads away from the speaker cable and then went into the setting s on my amp and sorted it out.

Sounds blooming marvelous.

He is available for hire :D
 
HIDE IT!! always the best method!

Saying that though, the same bro in law that is handy with cable ties also is a sound engineer and he did wonders when doing the cables keeping the power leads away from the speaker cable and then went into the setting s on my amp and sorted it out.

That's part of the reason for doing 2 sets of trunking, haven't decided exactly what's going in what yet but there will be some seperation of power leads and signal leads. Have to admit though that for my rear speakers they are currently wired up rubbishly with some of my dads old telephone wire. There is method and it's simply that i'm not guessing my cuts of good cable only to find when the replacement sofas arrive i've underestimated their size by a few centimeters and wasted 15 meters of wire. He has drums of the stuff at home so 25 meters missing isn't the end of the world.

Do you reckon HDMI will interfere with the audio as well? There's loads of them to run and i dont think i'll get all the power cables and hdmi leads in one bit of trunking
 
I will have to Ask my Bro. He seems to be very good at this sort of thing. Did i mention he is OCD and very anal? LOL

even brought a load of those little magnet things around to put around the cables to stop interference. HDMI being digital and not analog may be different to speaker cable. But I am just along for the ride if I am honest and not a guru in the field. Someone will pop in here and tell us I am sure.

Oh for wireless home hey? I suppose then we would be moaning about micro wave interference and our fillings falling out :)

Still, back to subject your set up looks good dude,
 
no worries, I know hdmi has been known to interfere with aerials and freeview reception so wasn't sure if it could effect the speaker wires. Wireless would be alright, I think i'm going to have to get homeplugs at ours though as being so old the walls are really thick to keeps the heat in and really aren't radiowave friendly. I barely got 2g reception on my phone so having the broadband has helpded already, now i just hope the ancient BT wires that are god knows how old can take faster than the 0.5mb/s that i was getting yesterday, couldn't even watch low quality youtube videos without waiting ages for buffering to finish :(
 
Just minor updates over the weekend. I redid all the wiring... however on finishing it all I found that for some reason the freeview box had lost all reception and I neglected to include the lighting wires :facepalm: So what was reasonably tidy had now had the aerial leads pulled back out and 3 power leads for the lights making it a right old mess again :suicide: But now i know the causes of my problems so when i can be bothered to pull it out again i can rejig and add the remaining wires in, it's tempting to just throw a sheet over it instead though :D
 
Well after 2-3 months of waiting look what arrived last monday:

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so now the whole thing looks like this

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We've still got some minor tweaks to do here and there, like wanting a rug and replacement coffee table with a side table by the sofa but i think largely we are there with our living room... Now on to the bedroom and spare room/office but they can wait until after our holiday and we can afford the replacement furniture.
 
Looks lovely mate. DO you have backlighting for the TV? NIce to see a fellow lava lamp fab :clap:
 
drgreenthumb80 said:
Looks lovely mate. DO you have backlighting for the TV? NIce to see a fellow lava lamp fab :clap:

We sort of have backlighting, it's 3 halogen spots along the back of the unit pointing upwards. It's the effect shown in the earlier pictures but it's quite effective for only costing £15

I quite like the lava lamps, both are my girlfriends but it's nice to have them on, we just need to find a permanent power supply for them instead of unplugging other stuff.
 
We sort of have backlighting, it's 3 halogen spots along the back of the unit pointing upwards. It's the effect shown in the earlier pictures but it's quite effective for only costing £15

I quite like the lava lamps, both are my girlfriends but it's nice to have them on, we just need to find a permanent power supply for them instead of unplugging other stuff.

Nice! I'm using a single halogen spot (the bendy neck type) and while it does make a difference, I'd like a bit more of a neat solution!
 

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