It dawned on me about a year ago that now that I had the ability to run ethernet between floors, send HDMI signals long distances, install ceiling speakers, and cleanly connect everything together, the media center taking up space in the living room just didn’t have to be there; with the wall-mounted TV the actual A/V components could be anywhere!
Here’s what my system used to look like:
I won’t lie; it was a lot of work cutting open the walls and ceiling and running the ethernet and speaker cables to the basement:
But, the end result turned out great!
Now I’ve got 4 media devices (Tivo, Windows Media Center, XBMC, and XBox) that can output to any of the 3 TVs or projector in the house. In the coming weeks I’ll have additional posts on various components used to bring this all together, media distribution, installation tricks, remote control options, and even some cleanup stuff. Stay tuned!
