TECHNOLOGY UPGRADE! I’m beefing up my HTPC and upgrading the case to the bottom one. I’m also building a home office and replacing my tower PC with a Mac Mini and dual monitors. Now I’ll consume less power and still have a very functional setup.
I Ikea hacked my Ikea hacked Ikea hack ( I N C E P T I O N ). That’s 4 Ikea hacks on this one Tobo TV stand. This hack was adding Capita 4” legs to accommodate the new viewing distance of my living room.
My inner peace comes from a clean living room. I will be sad when I finally have to move from this place.
My bluray collection is started to get pretty large! (Taken with Instagram at Higgihole)
I just bought this. I plan to jailbreak it, install XBMC onto it, and hopefully replace my home theater PC. If Apple TV handles all my entertainment needs, I will disassemble my HTPC and sell it part-by-part. The money I save will go into my downpayment savings fund for the car I plan to buy in May or June. I really hope this thing works out well.
So, I gave myself an early birthday present of a Tobo TV stand from Ikea to further update my living room. In the last few months I’ve upgraded my TV to a 46” Samsung LCD HDTV, added a Sony receiver and Polk Audio surround speakers. What I wasn’t prepared for was the massive amount of new wires I was taking on.
I decided to hack the furniture in order to control the mess of wires, so I went with this peg board setup. I mounted it with hinges to allow for easier access to the back of the peg board in the event that I need to move electronics around. I also hacked the Sanus speaker mounts for wire-through mounting and mounted them to the TV wall on the stand.
Next step for my living room… Building a Micro ATX HTPC so that I can move my current tower / server / seedbox / HTPC / whatever else it could be called into another room.
Happy early birthday to me!
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My love for this program has no end. The above pictures are screen shots from my TV in my living room, which is hooked up to a beautiful Home Theater PC that I built late last year. This HTPC has been running an awesome program called XBMC (originally standing for Xbox Media Center), which is what you are actually seeing in the screen shots.
My HTPC is set to automatically download all of my favorite TV shows’ latest episodes the night they come out. I snag all my shows in 720p HD quality unless the show isn’t offered in HD. Every 2 hours my computer checks the internet to see if one of my favorite TV shows has aired and downloads it if it finds one. Every 15 minutes XBMC checks for these downloads and when it finds one it scrapes theTVDB.com for information on the episode (including a synopsis, user ratings, a thumbnail, actor info, etc) and catalogs it. Aside from the initial setup of the program, I don’t have to do anything anymore aside from logging on to a website and adding a TV show if a new series begins that I want to watch. I can just plop on the couch, pull up my remote (which happens to be my iPhone) and watch TV in HD without paying a retarded $60+ a month bill.
In addition to this, I have a catalog of around 150 movies in this program. Most of these movies are also in 720p with 5.1 surround sound. XBMC scrapes theMovieDB.com in the same fashion as it does with TV shows. I also have NES and SNES console games cataloged into XBMC and I can launch them with my remote and then play them via a SNES controller plugged into a USB input.
I’ve been running this setup for several months now and I am geekfully happy about it. The only reason I’m posting about it now is because I just finished adding the NES / SNES feature and I’m still all giddy about it. From my couch I now have the following options:
- Watch a bluray or DVD from my physical collection of 100+ movies.
- Watch a bluray rip from my digital collection of 100+ movies.
- Watch an HD rip of current television shows.
- Play any of the following consoles: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii
- Play any of the following emulators: NES, SNES
- Listen to music via iTunes and the iPhone Remote app
Andddddddddddd…
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