Get 70 Million Transistors for $22 Bucks

Posted on September 4, 2008 by Dan

Sometimes a good deal comes along that’s so good you need to jump on it whether you need the item or not. For me today that deal was an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice core CPU for $21.99 from Newegg with free shipping. A 24-hour deal that as of this writing ends in less than 2 hours and of the 99 desktop CPUs on Newegg it is the cheapest one available just beating out a vanilla Sempron LE-1100 by $1. It’s pretty amazing the kind of technology that can be bought for $22, less than what it takes to fill my car only halfway with gas. This 3-year old processor used to sell for over $350 and was once considered one of the best performing CPUs available with great overclocking potential. The 3800+ represented the highest stock-clocked Venice core from AMD and runs at a cool 2.40Ghz. Most people have been able to get this CPU up to 2.7-2.8GHz on air cooling and with only a marginal bump in Vcore. This 89W processor built on 90nm technology certainly can’t compete with today’s 65nm and 45nm processors in terms of power dissipation or performance, but for a mere $22, I’m not sure anything else comes close in terms of price-to-performance ratio.

Okay, so I’m sure I didn’t need to buy this aging hunk of transistors and silicon, but I figured Newegg wasn’t going to have these around for long (not a single 939-socket mobo can be found on their site) and once it was gone I’m sure it will be gone for good. And since I’ve got a 939-based system for my HTPC, I thought it would be good to just have on hand either as a backup, or as an upgrade to my 3200+ Venice core that’s in there now. Though the benefit may be marginal, since my 3200+ is already overclocked to 2.4GHz, essentially making it a 3800+, I am hoping to be able to squeak a few more MHz out of the OC and get it running at 2.6-2.7GHz, therefore in keeping in tune with AMDs naming convention, it would be somewhere around a 4100+ (which according to the way I remember AMD marketing these things, it should be comparable to a Pentium IV running at 4.1GHz).

I’m still on the fence with the whole Blu-ray DVD player, but feel that I may need a small bump in processing power for decent playback of Blu-ray DVDs without hiccups. This is my last ditch effort to keep an old PC around for at least a few more years and still have it do what I need it to do. I’m planning on keeping Windows XP on this machine for as long as humanly possible. Up until a month ago I was still running Windows 2000 on at least one my computers in the house, so I can imagine running XP for several years to come. Anyway, there’s tons of great articles on AMDs Venice CPUs and different systems people have thrown together with lots of benchmarks and results from overclocking. Though I can’t recommend jumping into the already-dead 939 socket, for $22 you could build a very capable HTPC or light gaming rig for cheaper than you could build almost any other system with any other CPU today.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/8327/1
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/3800Venice
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-venice.html
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2548&p=1

Update 11/22/2008 – I finally found some time tonight to pull out my old 3200 and install the new 3800. I remembered to drop the clock back down to the stock clock, so I wouldn’t have any issues booting up with the new CPU. The swap was a breeze. I cleaned up the HSF with some rubbing alcohol and put on a new thin layer of Arctic Silver heat sink compound and clamped it onto the CPU nice and tight. I definitely liked the way Socket 939 worked in that regard, way easier than Intel’s LGA 775 socket. Unbelievably Microsoft didn’t make me reactive Windows like I expected was going to happen. Apparently you have to change out more than just one major component to have to go through that. Thank goodness for small favors (though it only takes 6 minutes and a call to MS to get it reactivated, so it’s no big deal, but if you don’t have to do it, the better).

I immediately rebooted and went into the BIOS and started OC’ing. Not that I need to OC it, in fact it’s plenty fast for just a modest HTPC at the stock speed, but where’s the fun in running stock? I bumped it up 5% and everything ran fine, so I bumped it up 10% and added a bit of Vcore just to bring it up to 1.40V as read by CPU-Z. Everything was still running good and the CPU was running at 2.64 GHz with the bus at 220 MHz, HT at 880 MHz and my DDR400 running at 220 MHz (or 440 MHz). I tried going one step further to 225 and Windows wouldn’t boot. So I bumped the Vcore up to 1.45V and it still wouldn’t boot. So I called it good for now and dropped it back down to 220 MHz and set the Vcore for 1.425V. Things seem to work fine there. I was more curious as to how much higher the x12 multiplied 3800 CPU would go over the x10 multiplier of the 3200. I was running a 15% OC just to get to 2.30 GHz and now I’m running a modest 10% overclock and my CPU is at 2.64 GHz. I watched The Incredibles and there wasn’t a single hiccup and the audio didn’t drop out on me once. So I’d say it was a worthwhile investment. Windows loads in under 30 seconds and I can be on the Internet or watching a movie just a few seconds later. Additionally, windows shuts down in less than 10 seconds. I know it’s not a real merit for how fast your computer is, but I’m keeping this machine extremely light on software apps, so I don’t have any benchmarking suites installed. Other than Super PI, which this thing can calculate to 1M decimal places in 33 seconds. Slow by today’s standards, but still faster than it was! My 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo E6700 does it in 17 seconds. So, yeah.

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Netflix’s Watch Instantly Feature is an Instant Hit

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Dan

I decided to join Netflix today after reading a lot of great things about their new “Watch Instantly” feature. They’ve got over 12,000 titles available for immediate download to your PC, or as the case may be, your Home Theater PC. With my new HTPC working quite nicely, the only next thing to worry about is what to watch? I’ve been enjoying watching recaps of a bunch of different shows, which utilizes Microsoft’s new SilverLight plug-in for IE. (All I have to say about that is it looks fantastic and playback is crisp and clear and uninterrupted). But when it comes to options for downloadable movies, Netflix seemed to be the obvious choice for it’s great selection, low monthly subscription costs and unlimited movie downloads. That’s right, unlimited downloads for all but the most basic plan. I opted for the $8.99/month plan which allows only 1 DVD out at a time but unlimited movie downloads. I plan on testing this unlimited concept over the next 14 days.

So far the kids have watched just about all of the Charlie Brown episodes and Free Willy 2 while I’ve only watched Almost Heroes (Matthew Perry is so funny in that movie) and an episode of 30 Rock and all of them have played flawlessly. The picture quality on our 50″ HD LCD TV looks near DVD quality and even somewhat better than network broadcast SD content. The original aspect ratio of the movie is maintained during normal and fullscreen playback which is what I personally prefer since there’s nothing worse than geometric distortion in movies. You’d never even notice that you were watching streamed video online from a computer. Movies are decoded as 2.0 Dolby Pro Logic and sound just fine through the S/PDIF out. Though 5.1 would be really nice, I don’t suppose it’s totally necessary for casual movie watching. Though if Netflix wants their download feature to take a serious position in the average home theater, they will need to to add 5.1, I believe.

Netflix has a great gallery view of movies that are broken down into genres and further into subcategories of each genre. By just hovering over a movie, you get a quick glance at other details, such as the rating, runtime, etc. There’s additional details submitted by reviewers that goes into more details on how the movies are rated, so you can further monitor whether or not that PG movie is going to have anything that might be inappropriate for your 5-year old (though not quite as detailed as Amazon’s IMDB). The web pages are easy to navigate and well laid out. Additionally, once you start to rate a few movies, Netflix begins to get an idea of the kinds of movies you like and makes recommendations, which is very cool.

The movies play back using a Windows Media Player plugin for Internet Explorer (IE6+ and WMP11 required) which must be downloaded the first time you watch a movie and takes only a few seconds to install. The quality of the movie you get depends on your internet connection speed and comes in 3 flavors. The highest claims to be about 2.2Mbps bitrate video. That’s about 1/2 what you might get from a DVD so expect there to be some amount of additional compression but the picture still looks quite good. The last time I ran a bandwidth check on my Internet I was getting just over 19Mbps, so needless to say, everything we’ve watched has been the highest quality. Even my laptop over a wireless-G connection will play the highest-quality downloads. There’s definitely room for Netflix to move up to an HD-quality stream, especially since WMP is already set up to decode up to 1080p without issues. The infrastructure is in place, it’s just matter of when HD will be available. On their site the only comment they make is that they are working to offer HD content “in the future”. I’m hoping they kick it in gear really soon, because ideally, high definition downloads on-demand would be awesome.

Anyway, if you also live 20 minutes from a Blockbuster and they’ve called you half-a-dozen times letting you know that you’ve basically just bought the last three movies you never returned (no, that’s never happened to me :-p) and you’ve got a PC you can hook to a TV, I would definitely recommend checking out Netflix. We all know it’s been around for a while but if you haven’t looked into it, now’s the time to try it out.

Update 10/1/2008 – Netflix announced a deal with Starz today that resulted in over 1,000 new movies being available to watch instantly, a lot of which are, believe it or not, actually worth watching. Up until today I would have given Netflix a D- in terms of decent content. They tout a lot of movies, but after watching a few oldies-but-goodies, there wasn’t much else that was even remotely worthwhile. Renting DVDs through the mail was the only way to get anything good. Now they’ve got Spiderman III, Pirates of the Caribbean and Meet the Robinsons just to name a few. The kids are watching Disney’s Enchanted right now and the picture quality looks great (not that they are paying any attention to that). I have noticed that there is a much more dominant strobe effect to the background during pans and scans. It’s not always noticeable, it depends on how quickly or slowly the camera is panning over a scene, but it is definitely choppier than a regular DVD. It’s probably due to movies being filmed at only 24fps but is most likely compounded by the extra compression in getting a 5GB down to only 1GB. Though I haven’t read about anyone else complaining about the same thing. Anyway, I haven’t browsed all that’s new, but I’ve added at least 10 movies to my Watch Instantly queue and can’t wait to sit down a watch a few of them.

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Death Cab Plays Mesa Amphitheater in the Heat

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Dan

Ben Gibbard and company performed last night in Mesa and quite literally rocked the stage for almost 2 hours straight. They played a total of 22 songs all of which sounded fast, loud and rockin’. They put their studio versions of each song to shame. Even the mellower, slower songs just rock when they play them live. They need to release a live CD. They’ve just got so much energy. After the first couple of songs, Ben and Chris commented on how hot it was. Yes, it’s hot in Arizona. Yesterday it was 109°F at 5:00 P.M. and by the time Death Cab came on it was still 103°F (though other weather reports say it was a few degrees hotter than that). Ben said “it’s like a microwave…in about 45 minutes…I’ll be delicious.” Chris said it was more like a “macrowave”. Ah, but it’s a dry heat guys. Nothing like Virginia this time of year. I was impressed though, even in the heat, they didn’t miss a beat.

There were very little breaks between songs, it was just one great tune after another all blended together into one great show. They played a good mix of old stuff and new stuff, the favorites and the classics. They put on such a great show that it was hard to believe it was already 10:00 P.M. by the time they played their last tune and said good night. I really just wanted them to keep going until they’d exhausted every tune off of every album. They kept the between-song chitter chatter at a minimum, but the best thing Gibbard said was in the middle of Follow You Into the Dark, there were a few people waving lighters in the air, and he says, “I like you guys keeping it real with the lighters, it makes a band feel they’re Bon Jovi.” Ben rocks. It was an awesome show, one that won’t be forgotten any time soon.

Here’s what they played in order – Mesa Amphitheater, June 19th, 2008. This playlist is going on the iPod right now.

Bixby Canyon Bridge
The New Year
Why You’d Want to Live Here
Photobooth
Crooked Teeth
Long Division
Grapevine Fires
A Movie Script Ending
Company Calls
Title Track
Soul Meets Body
I Will Follow You Into the Dark
I Will Possess Your Heart
Cath
Sound of Settling
Marching Bands of Manhattan
—Encore—
Your Bruise
Title and Registration
No Sunlight
Styrofoam Plates
Tiny Vessels
Transatlanticism

I didn’t bring my camera to the show, but here’s some video that some other dude shot. Enjoy!

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E-Flite Mini Showtime 4D Build Review

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Dan

Last weekend the inevitable happened – I crashed my Brio 10. Though overall the plane flew quite nicely, its bad tendency to snap with elevator input finally got the best of me and it went into the ground. I had about 30 flights on it, and no matter how docile I was with it, it always felt like it had a mind of its own. Though repairable, I decided to pull all the electronics out and drop it into a new plane. And what better plane than the E-Flite Mini Showtime 4D. It’s a direct fit for the Park 480 1020 kv motor, S75 servos, 40A ESC, and 3S TP 2200 V2 battery. What sold me on this plane was a single sentence of a review over at RCGroups.com where they stated that the plane had “no tendency to snap out” no matter how much elevator input they gave it, and above all things, that’s what I wanted. Not to mention the super-large wind area as compared to mt Brio 10. This plane is more geared for 3D and not so much of a pattern flyer like the Brio 10 was. It should be able to stay afloat at much lower air speeds and hopefully won’t be dropping a wing every time I bank around a turn at half throttle.

The build went together with only a few minor hiccups. The major two issues I had were the lack of necessary parts to complete the plane. They shorted me two of the CF rods for the rear stab as well as the little 1/2″ spacer for the spinner. I managed to fabricate a spacer (out of an old 5×5 prop) to get the spinner to work properly and I stole a couple of CF rods from my Great Planes Extra. But still, no one likes having to fabricate their own parts with a Dremel or steal parts from other kits to get a new plane up and running. This seems to be common complaint with E-Flite planes on these very two issues. You think they would have figured it out by now? Maybe I got an older kit? Either way, E-Flite should fix the problem. (I never did get the spinner to work on my Brio for the same reason).

Other than that, the plane was a lot of fun to put together and was accomplished in just a few hours over a 2 day period. The other reason I picked this plane is it just looks so stinking awesome. I love the color scheme, much cooler than the Extra 260 (which was the other plane I debated). The clear undercoat really adds to the planes looks too. It’s got a massive rudder that sits out far behind the elevator and has a steerable tailwheel so taxing around should be a breeze.

While setting up my radio and getting all the control surfaces adjusted, I noticed my S75 servo on the elevator was clicking at max deflection. I turned down the EPA a bit as it was just barely on the edge of pushing the elevator beyond its physical max deflection capability. I think I am going to replace just that one servo with a Hitec HS-65HB servo mainly because I did kind of a crappy job installing the elevator into the stab and it’s pretty stiff going up and down. The servo appears to be having a harder time moving it. I shouldn’t have glued those hinges so tight, but oh well, not much I can do about it now. I think the S75 may work fine, and for the rudder and ailerons they should be fine. Those hinges all worked out really well and move super smoothly and freely. Just that stinking elevator I made too tight. So an HS-65HB has 25 in.oz. of torque which only weighs 4.1 grams more should do the trick. I could use the tail weight anyway, since it’s nose heavy right now. CG is about 3.75″ instead of the recommended 4.5″. I really worry about the elevator servo more than the others, because if that one fails, I’m pretty sure the plane would be toast, but any of the others go, I feel like I could still bring it down in one piece. So if I have to have one servo not fail for sure, it’s the elevator. And $25 seems like a small investment to make on what could potentially be a fatal first flight.

For the prop I’m starting out with an APC 12x6E and we’ll see how she flies and go from there. I know I’m looking for something that will allow the plane to fly a little slower than the 11x7E I was flying with my Brio 10. After running some static tests I can say that little Park 480 motor can move some air! Swinging a massive 12″ prop it has no problems just cranking it out. I really need to get a power meter to see what kind of power I’m really getting, but I’ll just stick with the recommended prop settings for now and hope for the best.

Here’s a few pics of the build. Maiden will probably come next week. Until then…oh and one other thing, Happy Father’s Day!

Here’s a few pics on the battery tray mod I had to do to get the CG just right:
RC Groups Page 41
RC Groups Page 42

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Audiopulse 12″ EPIC Subwoofer Project Showcase

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Dan

I’ve been a big fan of TC Sounds drivers for over 15 years. They manufacture some of the beefiest, high-excursion drivers and passive radiators on the market. I was shocked to learn that they’ve filed for bankruptcy in spite of having such a great reputation for amazing drivers and not only among the DIY crowd but as an OEM as well. I’m not exactly sure what happened behind the scenes that would put them in such a situation. Their last push was developing the Audiopulse brand which isn’t available from too many places except one for now – Parts Express.

When I finally got around to thinking about building a sub for my home theater, I checked out the specs on the EPIC 12″ dual 4-ohm driver, the only one PE was carrying at the time, and decided it would be a perfect fit for my small home theater. Quick specs include 600W RMS power handling, 22mm xmax one-way (over 2″ pk-pk mech. travel), voice coil leads stitched into the linear spiders, 140 oz. magnet, and a sweet black anodized single dish alloy cone. T/S parameters make this sub suitable for either a vented or sealed enclosure. The fairly high Vas (97 L) requires a large 4th order enclosure to achieve a nominally flat response. I didn’t have room to make the box as big as the driver would like, but ended up with a 95 L box that when tuned to 22 Hz would yield only a slight +0.8 dB hump and and f3 of 21 Hz. Which is only slightly worse than if the box were nearly 1.5 times that size.

The biggest compromise I made was choosing to use a single 4″ diameter port. Below 30 Hz, the port air speed arises well above the socially acceptable level, but I just was not physically able to fit two 4″ ports in the box when each one needed to be 38″ long to tune it to 22 Hz. And the volume that the ports took up inside the box, took up precious volume I was trying to conserve in order to reach the lowest extension possible with this design. I knew the port noise would be audible, but I wasn’t too worried about it. In practical terms, if the bass is thumping loud enough to make the air chuffing out of the port super noisy, then chances are the rest of the speakers are also loud enough to cover it up. While doing sine sweeps, the air noise is quite apparent, but while actually watching a movie, I didn’t hear it near as much. Though if I had more room, I would have definitely opted for dual 4″ ports or a single 6″ port.

For now I’m powering the sub with an old stereo receiver I’ve had since I was 15 years old. It pushes a modest 80W per channel into 8 ohms. Since this is a dual coil 4 ohm sub I had the option to either run one very conservative channel into 8 ohms with the coils wired in series, or push the amp beyond its rated capability and run one channel to each 4 ohm coil. So what do you think I did? Well, I added a fan to the amp, and then I wired both channels to each coil to get the most power possible out of this amp/driver combo. I’m not too worried about frying this 20 year-old antique, I’ve already replaced the IC that makes up the entire amp, so if something happens, I can always replace it again. I don’t know what the amp is capable of pushing into 4 ohms as far as watts goes, but it’s probably not much more than 100W per channel, so I figure the sub is seeing around 200W total. Nowhere near the 600W it can handle. A Behringer A500 is in the plans for the near future. Or something in the Crown family. We shall see.

I ran some tests the other night with REW and did some in-room FR plots. I was very happy, after building so many sealed subs recently, to see the response nearly dead flat from 70 Hz all the way down to 20 Hz, before it began rolling off, was very exciting. And wow, that thing plays deep, even better than what it modeled like. The f3 was suppose to be around 21 Hz, instead it’s more like 18 Hz in-room. Which for me and my modest family room is plenty. I haven’t done any max SPL tests, I’ve been hesitant to do those kinds of tests ever since I cooked a brand new TC sounds driver years ago. But after watching the into to Toy Story II (my favorite new-sub test DVD) this sub just shakes, rattles and rolls the whole house. Even at only 200W. I can’t imagine what this thing could sound like with 3x that much power. Well, mathematically, it should only sound 4.77 dB louder, but that is still substantial amount of volume, and would certainly be noticeable.

So check out some of the pictures of the build for this sub. Even though it’s a somewhat compromised design as far as cubic volume and port area go, it sounds absolutely fantastic and does not take up any room in my family room, as it’s completely integrated into the entertainment center. And I know what you’re thinking, doesn’t the whole entertainment center just rattle? Well, if I hadn’t build that whole entertainment center out of 3/4″ MDF and glued and screwed every piece together, I might say yes, but the entertainment center is as beefy as the sub is. So it’s quite solid and doesn’t rattle at all. The best part is this sub gets a 10/10 for the Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF). My wife is very happy that the sub is hidden into the furniture and is barely noticeable. I have to agree, though I don’t mind big huge subs as much as she does (wait till you see my sewer pipe sub I’m building next), I still tend to shy away from anything that is overly cumbersome for the room. And this sub is definitely not that. But it definitely knows how to fill the room with lots of great-sounding, heart-pumping, movie-crunching bass.

EPIC Bookcase Subwoofer Specs:

Audiopulse EPIC 12″ Subwoofer w/dual 4 ohm coils
95L Enclosure tuned to 22 Hz
4″ PVC port 17.5″ long with 6″ flare
Flush-mounted driver with 1.5″ thick front baffle
Made from 3/4″ MDF
20-3/8″ x 26-5/8″x 15″ (WxHxD)
Flat in-room response to 20 Hz
-3 dB point 18 Hz
600W RMS capability
Painted in Behr Linen White to match entertainment center

Check out below for more pictures.

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Our New Custom-Built DIY Entertainment Center

Posted on May 21, 2008 by Dan

DIY Entertainment Center

DIY Entertainment Center

Entertainment centers aren’t cheap. And in most cases, they aren’t exactly what you want either. They’re either too big or too small, the wrong color, wrong style, or they just don’t fit your TV exactly right. Oh and did I mention, they aren’t cheap? About two years ago we were visiting my brother in Utah and he had this super-nice entertainment center, but he didn’t buy it, his wife built it from scratch. That’s what started the idea brewing in my head. We needed an entertainment center, and one like the one she built would be perfect. I asked her a bunch of questions, and she basically explained exactly how she made it. I checked it out inside and out to see how she made each piece and then started making a plan of my own.

The style we were shooting for is commonly referred to as French Country. It’s a simple style with clean lines, bead board paneling, and has sort of an antique look with its off-white color. The design is made of 3 pieces – a center console for the TV and stereo and then two bookcases that sit on either side. This is also pretty typical of what you find in most stores and catalogs. It’s more of a wall console than just an entertainment center, mainly because of the bookcases which add room for plants, pictures, books, and other non-entertainment related items. That and it takes up pretty much the entire wall. With a design in place, I made a cut sheet plan, to see just how much wood and materials I would need. Here’s the list of items below.

Materials Needed

(5) 4′ x 8′ sheets of 3/4″ MDF
(2) 4′ x 8′ sheets of 3/8″ bead board
(10) 1″ x 3″ Pine by 8′
(2) 1″ x 2″ Pine by 8′
(1) box of 2″ drywall screws
(1) box of 1-3/8″ drywall screws
(1) 16 oz. bottle Titebond wood glue
(1) tube Liquid Nails
(1) gallon Behr paint Linen White in satin finish
(1) satin quart polycrylic
(2) 8′ pieces of rounded base board 2-1/4″ tall (for doors)
(1) 8′ pieces of base board 2-1/4″ tall
(1) 5′ piece of base board 2-1/4″ tall
(1) 8′ piece of crown molding 3-1/4″
(2) 5′ pieces of crown molding 3-1/4″
(2) 1/4″ hardwood MDF panel 2′ x 4′ (for the doors)
Hinges and knobs

This is a basic list of tools I used for this job:

Cordless Drill
Various drill bits (1/8″ – 3/8″)
Countersink bit (or 3/8″ drill bit)
Phillips bit for drill
Circular Saw or table saw with ripping blade
Electric palm/orbital sander
Router and bits
150 grit and 220 grit sand paper
2″ and 4″ Paint brushes
(4) 1/4″ nap paint rollers
4″ foam brush

I followed the cut sheet I had drawn up (with some small changes made on the fly, so if you’re attempting to copy the plans, please make sure you adjust the dimensions accordingly. I apologize this cut sheet was used more as a general starting point for determining how many sheets of MDF I needed and which cuts could be made out of each and not as a direct guide for cutting each piece) and made all the cuts for the sides, tops, bottoms and shelves for the center console and bookcases. With all the pieces cut, I assembled the bookcases by measuring out where each shelf was to go and then screwing each shelf into place on just one side of the bookcase. Then I went through and glued and screwed on the other side. What I had at this point was just a simple 4-sided box with a bunch of shelves evenly spaced tying the sides together. The bottom shelf is mounted 4″ from the bottom, so the actual underside that sits against the floor is mostly open.

The next thing that went was the bead board. This is just measured and cut to fit on the back of the book case. This part is key to making the book case strong and sturdy. Without the bead board backing, the whole book case would most likely break and fall apart the first time you tried to move it. The bead board is just screwed on the back so that it can be removed later if needed (like when I add my sub).

The 1×3 pine is the facing which covers the front of all the MDF pieces and makes for a clean, finished look. It’s basically a frame that is glued and nailed onto the front of each bookcase. I routered the interior and exterior edges just to take off the harsh, sharp edge, and then hand sanded down the rest. The facing frame is cut about 1/4″ wider than the bookshelf itself, which leaves about 1/8″ left that hangs over the outside edges on either side.

I added the crown molding for the top and base board for the bottom to finish off the look and hide all the edges for a nice, clean, finished look. The bookcases sit back 3″ from the center console and the base board makes one, nearly-seamless line around the entire bottom of each piece. I added four 20W under-cabinet halogen lights from Home Depot and put them on a 3-way touch dimmer. They add just enough light to the top portion of each cabinet and really look quite nice. The lowest dimmer setting can be left on while watching movies. I cut two 8-foot pieces of baseboard into frames for the doors to cover the equipment under the TV and glued it to a 1/4″ piece of MDF hardboard. I installed them with 4 self-closing hinges and finished them off with a pair of matching black knobs. With the equipment hidden from view, the whole entertainment center does a very nice job of framing the TV, stereo and speakers without making it seem like the focal point. Then my wife has been going through and adding decorative elements to each shelf to give it that nice, homey feeling. It’s got a few more nicknacks to go.

And that’s it in a nutshell. I didn’t take near as many pictures as I should have. But the whole time I was building this thing, I kept looking at it and thinking, this thing is never going to work and it just looks like a bunch of wood slapped together! But in the end, I am really happy with how it turned out (not to mention it looks a million time better than what we had before – see the pictures below). I’m sure the way I built it isn’t the way a real furniture builder would do it, but given the tools I had and my limited knowledge of furniture building, I don’t think it turned out half bad. And I can definitely recommend to anyone thinking of getting an big entertainment center/wall console like this, if you even have just an ounce of carpentry in your blood, then you should think about building one yourself. More than anything I just love sitting down to watch a TV show or movie, and know that I built that huge ‘ole thing. Though I certainly wouldn’t want to do it again any time soon.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, in order to get the stereo/DVR/DVD to work with the doors closed, I bought a Xantech 291-KIT/RP Hidden Link IR Kit which works awesome. It sits on top of the center channel and feeds all the IR to each component hidden below. Never again will the doors need to be open all the time to be able to fast forward through all the commercials of my favorite show.

UPDATE: Check out the sweet subwoofer that fits perfectly into the bookcase.

Posted in General, Home DIY | Tagged , , , , | 30 Comments