Furniture
Why banish your components to a dark, stuffy closet? Furniture makers have a variety of stands and cabinets that will make your gear easy to get to and great to look at.
There's no reason why your flat-panel HDTV has to stay nailed up against the wall like a hunting trophy. A number of manufacturers make mounts that will let you angle your set every which way — and there are even lifts that will make it pop up from the foot of your bed or descend from the ceiling.
Lighting Controls
Having the lights in your home theater dim before the movie begins is old news. Today's elaborate and customizable controls will let you teach your theater — and your home — some new lighting tricks.
Because of the exploding popularity of flat-panel TVs, elaborate home theater systems are no longer hidden in a separate room of the house. Instead, they're now put proudly on display in the middle of living rooms, family rooms, dens, and even bedrooms. Given these showcase environments, cinder blocks and shelves or discount-furniture "some assembly required" rack units (can you say "IKEA"?) just won't cut it. A wide variety of furniture makers now offer solid, well-designed cabinets, armoires, stands, corner units, and wall units to comfortably and stylishly display your gear.
But it's not just about good looks anymore. High-end A/V furniture pieces have to be solidly constructed to support the weight of all those (sometimes massive) components. They also have to allow enough space around each of your components for air to circulate freely and keep your gear from overheating. Meanwhile, the furniture should be designed so that you can easily get behind it, or be able to turn components around, for hookup and servicing. The material used to make the cabinet doors should allow signals from your remote control to pass through them freely. And there should be cabling channels or other design tricks to help keep all your wires out of sight. Lastly, your furniture should be able to evolve as your system does.
Construction
The strength of the shelves is especially important, since they'll start to bow in the middle over time if they're not made from thick or resilient material. Your TV coupled with a home theater receiver can weigh in at well over 200 pounds. Look for solid-wood construction; avoid particleboard. If you're considering a steel-and-glass unit, check for tempered safety glass, which is engineered to hold up under pressure.
Ventilation
This is critical no matter how many components you have in a rack, and it becomes even more important with elaborate systems. The more power-hungry your gear, the more heat it will produce, whether it's placed in a fully enclosed or open-frame design. Having components operate at high temperatures for sustained periods can compromise performance, shorten their lifespan, and, if they're seriously deprived of fresh air, cause them to shut down. Make sure that the shelves are not only wide and high enough but deep enough, since many black boxes can be longer than 20 inches. Ideally, each component should have at least 4 inches of space all the way around to allow for adequate airflow. The A/V cabinet in Sanus's Woodbrook AV Foundations collection has a "chimney" top with a small opening all the way around that lets cooler air in and hotter air out. The Chameleon cabinets from Salamander Designs include a cooling kit that uses thermostatically controlled fans to keep gear comfortable.
No system is ever really finished, and since you're likely to be continually tweaking, adjusting, and fixing your gear (although one hopes not too much of the last), you'll want to make sure you can get to each component easily. It's always best if you can get behind the furniture so you can work on your equipment's back panels. BDI's Avion series, for instance, has wheels hidden in the legs so you just have to roll the cabinet. But this kind of access isn't always easily accomplished — especially with massive wall units. In that case, look for furniture that makes it easy to turn gear around. While pullout shelves aren't common, they can be a real boon — but only if both the shelves and the runners are solidly built.
IR-Friendly
Once all your gear's tucked away in a cabinet, you'll want to be able to operate it without having to get up and press the buttons on each component. The front panels of BDI's cabinets feature infrared (IR)-friendly glass that allows signals from your remote control to pass through unimpeded. Salamander offers an optional IR-repeater system that lets you aim the remote at a single location on the unit, even when the cabinets have solid doors.
Cable Management
One of the most obvious "features" of any enthusiast's system is the inevitable tangle of wires. But nobody needs to know about your cable woes if you get a cabinet that has routing holes, wire channels, or cable straps. If your unit has solid shelves, be sure there are passageways for routing wires between them. If you have an open rack made of metal or glass, you'll want channels that not only route the cables but keep them out of view. A/V stands from Bell'O, for example, feature the company's patented Cable Management System to securely hide power cords and interconnect cables.
Expandability
It's essential to future-proof. Since new gear is continually coming out, you should think about what you might be adding to your system over the next few years. If you don't have a media server, for instance, you might want to make sure your unit can accommodate one. Does it let you add shelves or reposition them to make room for new gear? Hooker's Fairview wall unit, for example, has an expandable bridge above the TV area so you can vary the size of the console opening according to the size of the set. Maybe the ultimate example of expandability, though, is Vantage Point's Evo, a modular wall-mounted system designed with flat-panel TVs in mind. Its aluminum frame has a series of tracks that easily expand to accommodate new gear or new configurations of gear. You don't need to breach your wall to install it, and it gives you fast access to all your wires and power connections. — Jamie Sorcher
For years, if you wanted a big-screen TV, you had to give up a sizable chunk of your home's square-footage — and deal with a décor-killing cabinet. But now, even the largest plasma and LCD screens can be hung on a wall to save valuable floor space. Plus, they just look cool.
But there's much more to mounting a flat-panel TV than simply hanging it on the wall. To begin with, you have to decide where you want the set, and then you have to decide what type of mount will best suit the location and your viewing habits. And there's always the question of what to do with all those wires, since cables dangling from a wall-hanging TV can be a real eyesore.
Do-it-yourself installation isn't out of the question when using a simple mount with a small TV. (For more on doing it yourself, check out S&V installation guru John Sciacca's How to Mount a Flat-Panel TV.) But for large flat-panel sets hung with more elaborate mounts, it's probably best to leave the installation to a pro.
Prime Location
First, determine the best place to mount your set. You probably already have a spot in mind, but there are a few things to consider before drilling any holes. Of course, you need to make sure the location is out of direct sunlight. Before you buy the TV, you might want to take a piece of poster board or a picture that's roughly the same size as the set and hang it for a while to see how it looks in the space. As for how high to mount the TV, while the viewing angle isn't as critical with recent LCDs as it was with older models, you don't want to strain your neck by having to look up throughout a 2-hour movie. A good rule of thumb is to place the center of the screen 5 feet from the floor.
Choosing a Mount
Now that you know where you'll place your flat-panel TV, it's time to choose a mount. Fixed mounts are the least expensive option and are best for DIY installations. They hold a flat-panel closest to the wall for a smooth, clean look, but they also make it hard to get to the sides and bottom of the set to connect wires. This shouldn't be a problem, though, if you took the time to hook up the TV to your components before moving it into place.
Tilt or swivel mounts let you adjust the angle of the screen up or down. With some of these, you have to detach the TV before you can adjust the mount, so check if this is the case before you attach the set. Also test the amount of tilt that the mount offers to make sure it's sufficient for your needs. Articulating or swing-arm mounts allow the most flexibility, since the TV can be pulled away from the wall and moved side to side and, in most cases, tilted up or down. Of course, with tilting and articulating mounts, the flat-panel isn't flush against the wall, and more design-conscious viewers might feel like this makes the TV stick out like a sore thumb.
Check Your VESA
Flat-panel TVs come with a variety of mounting-hole patterns, not all of which match every mount. So, once you've decided on a mount, make sure its pattern matches the location of the mounting holes on your TV. One way to make sure the TV and the mount match is to look for the VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) label on products. The label will tell you how the holes are configured and how far apart they're located. (You can usually find information on VESA compliance in your TV's owner's manual.) But all is not lost if your flat-panel and mount don't match, since many companies make adapter plates.
Mounting your flat-panel TV in a recess in the wall offers the lowest-profile look, but this approach can come at a steep cost. Besides the extra expense of cutting a large hole, once you've made that hole, you're stuck with it. If you later decide you want a bigger — or smaller — screen, you'll have to do an elaborate modification. Also, plasma sets generate a lot of heat, so make sure the space is well ventilated. But a recessed installation combined with an articulated mount gives you the best of both worlds — a flush look as well as the flexibility to pull the TV away from the wall and angle it any which way you choose.
Robotic mounts are a couch potato's dream, since they can be adjusted up or down and side to side via remote control. And if you don't want anything on your walls at all, a ceiling mount can make your TV look like it's floating in mid-air. But mounting a flat-panel on the ceiling is even harder than mounting one on the wall, and it's best left to a professional.
Want to get even more elaborate? Motorized lifts can make a flat-panel pop up out of a piece of furniture. Installers often work with cabinetmakers to integrate TVs into furniture, but several companies offer pieces such as cabinets, chests of drawers, and even footboards for beds that can accommodate a lift-mounted flat-panel. An installer can also make your TV come down from the ceiling, but besides the extra clearance and cash needed to perform this trick, the lift alone runs about $3,000 — roughly the price of a good flat-panel set.
Keeping It Simple
There's no rule that says a plasma or LCD TV has to be hung on the wall. You can instead use the table stand that comes with almost any flat-panel TV, and home theater accessory companies offer all manner of tabletop and floor stands that fit any application or décor. Placing your set on a table or a credenza certainly makes installation easy enough, and the piece of furniture helps to hide any wires hanging from the back.
Regardless of how you choose to display your flat-panel TV, the important thing is to make sure it's securely mounted. But that doesn't mean you can't have a clean, low-profile look — which was probably one of the main reasons why you bought an LCD or plasma set in the first place. By giving some thought to the location and mounting style, you'll end up with a TV that's an integral part of both your house and your home-entertainment experience — and not something that's just taking up space. — Doug Newcomb
Lighting Controls
One of the most exciting moments in the entertainment experience happens before a show even starts. Whether it's at a concert, at the theater, or in your own house, having the lights go down is a visual and emotional cue that something special is about to happen. It's just not the same when you merely flip the light switch before starting a movie at home. But you don't need to have a full-blown whole-house system to add a light show in your media space, or even in other rooms. There are plenty of options available to let you take control of your lighting, and they come in a range of prices and complexity.
Dimmers and Powerlines
On the most basic level, easy-to-install dimmers that replace standard light switches can control everything that's on a single circuit, such as all the lights in your media room. And some DIY dimmers enable multiple switches in a room to be governed by a single remote control. There are even in-line dimmers that let you use a remote to control plugged-in lamps.
Dimmers are great for a single room. But if you want to control lighting in different parts of the house from a single place, there are various "powerline" systems that let you do just that, using your home's existing wiring. The X10 protocol, which has been around since the late '70s, sends radio signals along electrical wiring to communicate with other light switches. But X10 isn't always reliable and can suffer from interference.
Universal Powerline Bus (UPB) is more dependable than X10, and signals are sent digitally. Home Automation, Inc. (HAI) light-control systems support this standard. But UPB is susceptible to attenuation or signal loss in some applications. Another powerline system is SmartLabs' Insteon, which has better reliability than X10, in part because of a faster data rate. Plus, it's backwards compatible with X10 and can be added to older X10 systems.
RF Lighting Controls
A fast-growing way for homeowners to gain more control over lighting — as well as integrate it with their home-entertainment gear — is with radio-frequency (RF) systems such as ZigBee and Z-Wave. Both standards have lined up companies to build compatible products around their open-platform systems. ZigBee is backed by Philips, Samsung, and Mitsubishi, while Z-Wave has Intel, lighting-accessory manufacturer Leviton, and Monster Cable in its camp. Rather than use a house's electrical wiring, ZigBee and Z-Wave send RF signals to compatible components via "nodes" in a mesh network. When a command is initiated (for example, to turn on a light), the signal passes from one node to the next until the task is completed. If a node is down or can't be "seen" by the RF signal, then the signal gets passed to the next node — much the way servers are used on the Internet.
Lighting-accessory manufacturer Lutron offers an RF system called RadioRA that can cover areas as large as 2,800 feet per floor. It also allows you to control your lights from your car when you pull up to the house. Digital surround receivers from Kenwood, Denon, and B&K, as well as remotes from Universal Remote Control's Home Theater Master series, come programmed with codes for the RadioRA system. Remotes from Philips, Yamaha, Onkyo, Sony, and Marantz can also learn the codes.
Total Control
Of course, you can also do all this — and more — with a whole-house audio/video/security/climate-control system such as the ones offered by Crestron, Elan, AMX, and other companies. But these tend to be expensive. And because of their complexity, they should be installed by an electrician or a custom installer when your house is under construction or when you're doing a major remodel. Regardless, these systems — which are typically controlled via wall-mounted or wireless touchpanels — can give you total dominion over all the lights and anything else electronic in your house.
For whatever you can dream up — and for whatever your budget — you'll be able to find a lighting solution. If you're getting off the couch several times during a TV show or a movie to turn lights on and off, you're still living in the dark ages. — Doug Newcomb
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