wayneclements
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So this will be the last attempt at some sort of HT before I leave my apartment, move to somewhere a bit bigger with scope for dedicated room. How long that will be depends on the wonders of the housing price market. My original effort on this forum is here...
Aside from Looking at changing the toshiba 47" LCD to a 50" plasma, I dont plan on changing anything any time soon.
Equipment list, then pics.
TV - Samsung 50" Plasma (updated 27/6/10)
AV Receiver - ONKYO 607
Tuner - SkyHD+ Box
Gaming - PS3, XBox 360
Music - Apple TV
Speakers - Q Acoustics (C, L, R and Rears), Acoustic Energy Sub and some old kef eggs for the RS and LS hidden under the couch)
HD - Sony s bdp 350 (which ive had region hacked and is an excellant upscaler as well as bluray player)
Harmony 885 (Easily one of the best purchases ive ever got)
TV Units - Ikea (besta, backs off)
Marmitek IR repeater - Amazon
HTPC - Which I built myself and it outputs audio and picture via HDMI into the onkyo. Ive also fitted an IR receiver so it can be controlled by the harmony (more about the htpc and xbmc further down).
The main goal was to be as minimal as possible. I dont want to show the kit off, but rather hide it all away nice and quietly using the IR repeaters. Using the one button activity presses on the harmony remote, I like to the confuse the bejesus out of people when they wonder how and where everything is. All the speaker cables are hidden under the flooring and skirting. And the 2 Q Acoustic rears are the ones that hide up in the corners of the ceiling. The feature wall is a standard wooden and mdf floating wall which I knocked together one weekend. Im also using the zone 2 output of the onkyo 607 to output the sound of either the sky box, music system or radio to waterproof speakers in my bathroom. (Using an ipod touch I can control the music system whilst having a poo, whilst someone else watches tv in the lounge).
Typical Aussies score whilst im taking a picture. Booooooo!!!
The real workhorse of my setup is my media pc and xbmc configuration. Many hours have been spent making it into the slick unit it is now. One activity button push on the harmony will fire up the xbmc software meaning thats all the end user will ever see. So the first screen below is the first screen they see once jumping from watching sky etc. Sub menus for movies and tv shows are also shown (I decided to leave all my music on the apple tv since I dont like xbmc music system and the apple tv is a far better unit for music browsing, plus all my music content is on itunes anyway). Using RSS feeds into the utorrent client, all my TV shows are always up to date and xbmc (running a modified aeon skin) will automatically catalogue all my new downloads and rips every day. I've also now got around 2TB of movies on one of my NAS boxes which ive mainly ripped from my huge dvd and blu ray collection. Infact when most people see my xbmc setup, they ask me to do the same for them. So ive probably cloned my setup about a dozen times for friends and family. I recommend anyone with a little bit of PC knowledge, AV desire and time on their hands get into XBMC has there's a huge support and skinning community and using a media PC is literally saving me lots of time and money by getting all my content in one place. I cant really go into the XBMC, RSS Feed and utorrent setup anymore on here as they typically censor it.
UPDATE:
Update. New arrival this morning.
SAMSUNG - PS50C550 50" Full HD Plasma TV
UPDATE 2:
Sony Floorstanders replaced with wall mounted Q Acoustics 2020's
UPDATE 3:
Upgrade: Replaced 3x besta units with a 1 piece besta burs high gloss white bench. Had to modify its 2 drawer sections to take a shelf each and open.
Aside from Looking at changing the toshiba 47" LCD to a 50" plasma, I dont plan on changing anything any time soon.
Equipment list, then pics.
TV - Samsung 50" Plasma (updated 27/6/10)
AV Receiver - ONKYO 607
Tuner - SkyHD+ Box
Gaming - PS3, XBox 360
Music - Apple TV
Speakers - Q Acoustics (C, L, R and Rears), Acoustic Energy Sub and some old kef eggs for the RS and LS hidden under the couch)
HD - Sony s bdp 350 (which ive had region hacked and is an excellant upscaler as well as bluray player)
Harmony 885 (Easily one of the best purchases ive ever got)
TV Units - Ikea (besta, backs off)
Marmitek IR repeater - Amazon
HTPC - Which I built myself and it outputs audio and picture via HDMI into the onkyo. Ive also fitted an IR receiver so it can be controlled by the harmony (more about the htpc and xbmc further down).
The main goal was to be as minimal as possible. I dont want to show the kit off, but rather hide it all away nice and quietly using the IR repeaters. Using the one button activity presses on the harmony remote, I like to the confuse the bejesus out of people when they wonder how and where everything is. All the speaker cables are hidden under the flooring and skirting. And the 2 Q Acoustic rears are the ones that hide up in the corners of the ceiling. The feature wall is a standard wooden and mdf floating wall which I knocked together one weekend. Im also using the zone 2 output of the onkyo 607 to output the sound of either the sky box, music system or radio to waterproof speakers in my bathroom. (Using an ipod touch I can control the music system whilst having a poo, whilst someone else watches tv in the lounge).
Typical Aussies score whilst im taking a picture. Booooooo!!!
The real workhorse of my setup is my media pc and xbmc configuration. Many hours have been spent making it into the slick unit it is now. One activity button push on the harmony will fire up the xbmc software meaning thats all the end user will ever see. So the first screen below is the first screen they see once jumping from watching sky etc. Sub menus for movies and tv shows are also shown (I decided to leave all my music on the apple tv since I dont like xbmc music system and the apple tv is a far better unit for music browsing, plus all my music content is on itunes anyway). Using RSS feeds into the utorrent client, all my TV shows are always up to date and xbmc (running a modified aeon skin) will automatically catalogue all my new downloads and rips every day. I've also now got around 2TB of movies on one of my NAS boxes which ive mainly ripped from my huge dvd and blu ray collection. Infact when most people see my xbmc setup, they ask me to do the same for them. So ive probably cloned my setup about a dozen times for friends and family. I recommend anyone with a little bit of PC knowledge, AV desire and time on their hands get into XBMC has there's a huge support and skinning community and using a media PC is literally saving me lots of time and money by getting all my content in one place. I cant really go into the XBMC, RSS Feed and utorrent setup anymore on here as they typically censor it.
UPDATE:
Update. New arrival this morning.
SAMSUNG - PS50C550 50" Full HD Plasma TV
UPDATE 2:
Sony Floorstanders replaced with wall mounted Q Acoustics 2020's
UPDATE 3:
Upgrade: Replaced 3x besta units with a 1 piece besta burs high gloss white bench. Had to modify its 2 drawer sections to take a shelf each and open.
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