Name: Max
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Favorite Feature: The ability to pack in close friends to watch old school kung-fu movies or new foreign releases.
Clean is good. Very,very good. Having completed a full condo renovation, Max and his wife ended up with a dedicated home theater and seperate equipment room including lighting automation in the bedroom and theater. In addition, the home network was reworked to include a backup server and streaming digital music system that can fill the entire apartment with music.
A conveniently located closet provided the space needed to hide the equipment rack as well as the large collection of DVD's. Since the in season coats and shoes share this same space, all the messy wires are concealed.
Looking at Max's theater pictures alongside the rest of the renovated condo is refreshing and proof that having all the tech goodies doesn't necessarily mean that your space needs to be cluttered with wires and boxes of various mismatched shapes, colours and textures.
(Re-edited from a post originally published 03.15.07)
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Comments (6)
One question I have about ripping movies is what the utility is. If you own the movie, what advantage do you get by having it on disk rather than disc. I guess I could see an internal distribution system if you had a big house with multiple TVs that you wanted to feed.
Max, your place looks great. I used to really know my stuff when it came to home theaters and had a nice one. But since the new media center PCs have come out I have been confused. Right now, I am in need of a new TV/monitor since the one I have is outdated. I also want to link this into a home theater network. I am in the process of getting a new PC (laptop) and am wondering if Windows Media Center will do all I want as far as storing movies, music, etc. and being able to access it directly through my home theater. If some of you have recommendations let me know. I know I am going to also need some external hard drives for all the media storage. Thanks!
Oh cool, my post is back! There have been a few changes since this was first posted. We've upgraded the projector to a new 1080p model, replaced the old receiver with a new HDMI capable one, and added a Blu-Ray player for hi-def movie fun.
Guitar Hero II is on heavy rotation in the Xbox360, and is probably the best party game ever. Nothing beats having friends over to do some drinking and channel our inner rock-gods.
The front speakers are in that "black bar" you see under the screen. The rear speakers are mounted up on the rear wall. The sub is behind the couch. You can see it in one picture with the remote on it. I've since replaced that Pronto remote with a Harmony (so much nicer!) and installed a small shelf behind the back of the couch to hold it out of sight.
It's so sexy when you see all the technology they crammed into this space and perfectly managed to make it seem like they didn't use any. lol So much better than the classic LCD and boxy speaker settup. lol (Those make me laugh)
Regarding all those DVD's - having them on demand on digital storage is the ultimate, but if you're keeping the disks, you can easily cut down on the storage space required. I took all of my DVD's and software discs, and placed them in those cheap zippered cases. I don't need to look at the cases they came in to be able to enjoy them, and it cuts down on shelf space exponentially. (It also cuts down on lost software media) We put the original boxes in storage for a couple of months before finally tossing them because they're so unnecessary. My wife even covered the cases in nice fabrics so that they look better than the standard issue black nylon. A little "Real Simple" perhaps, but highly effective.