Sunday, April 8, 2018

Home Theater Rework

I finally got tired of the cabling MESS behind the Home Theater Center, so started cleaning it up yesterday afternoon after The Little Guy left. We have him from Friday evening until Saturday evening while the kids are at work. This gives Grandmomius Prime an extra 'day off', and lets us spend some time with him.

ANYWHOO.....the first order of business was to get some furniture glider pads under it so I could move it.



These simple little things are worth every penny you pay for them, and that goes double for us Olde Fartes that aren't 25 years old any more.

This was just going to be a "words only" post, but then a bit after I started it I figured it might be nice to kinda-sorta document it. The shot below was taken after I'd already cleaned up all the HDMI and neatened up the combined video/audio cabling for the Wii.



And a network verification test to the Oppo BluRay player and Denon A/V receiver. This took a while because both devices squawked there were firmware updates available, so I did the receiver first, and then the BluRay player. The big white box in the foreground is the Arris "SurfBoard" cable modem/Dual-Band WiFi router. The smaller white box in the background is our Wii game system. The silver box with the turquoise stripe on it is the D-Link 5-port 10/100 Ethernet switch that connects the A/V devices to the router, which has 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports.



Annnnd......almost finished. Still have a few cable to clean up, the telephone base station to wire in, and then push the whole shebang back towards the wall.



I'll clean this up tomorrow.....



There's an auto race on now!


7 comments:

  1. Sheesh, and I can't even program my remotes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When it comes to things electronic, I default to DRJIM. I saw his toy shop on the USS Iowa (most impressive). Technically, I think that it became his ship.

      Delete
    2. I had a whole lot of help on the Iowa!

      The best part was working with the young people who volunteered to help, and of course, our Veterans.

      The amount of Tribal Knowledge the old guys had about the ship's system is astounding. If we could get her fueled, I know we have enough qualified people that we could take her out again...

      Delete
  2. I really understand the kind of work this is, given my last couple of months. I'd say for guys in our age group, but maybe it's just for old, out of shape guys like me.

    Looks really good! Especially the contrast between the before and after pictures.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, SiG. I always tried to keep my cabling neat, but really 'got into it' when I worked at DirecTV and got to see how professionally installed racks looked. Both L.A. DTV facilities (Long Beach and Culver City) were built by "Sony Installation", and are works of art. The cabling is perfect, the labels are clear and concise, and I'll bet it cost a fortune!

      Still have some clean up work as shown in the second-to-the-last picture. Took me about 10 hours total, and putting the carpet glider pads on the "chassis" made it a WHOLE lot easier to slide in and out. The last time we slid it out took three guys!

      Delete
  3. Nice work.
    Kinda glad I don't watch TV because I'm extremely electrically challenged.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Brig.

      When you've been doing something for 50+ years, you tend to get pretty good at it!

      Delete

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