Custom cabinet ideas

From countertop.com, found some custom cabinet stores like:

http://dfwmsp.com/
http://www.qualitycabinets.com

Dreams for Home Entertainment System

For many of my goals, I’ll probably take the “Disney” approach, which is to:

1. Dream it
2. Plan it
3. Criticize it (ie, become more realistic about it)

So first, I have to dream it.

• Family room
  • HD-TV, ability to view from back porch
  • Closed caption, support realtime translation to other languages (in particular Japanese)
  • HD-DVR, ability to archive to PC
  • Archive (at least 1.6 TB)
  • Backup of archive (another 1.6 TB)
  • Central library for video, photo, music
  • Region-free DVD player/recorder
  • Internet radio
  • Security camera
  • Home automation
  • Video/photo/audio streaming to any room / outdoors, separate control panel in each room
  • Place-shifting (both inside of house and outside of house)
  • Internet surfing, weather
  • Remote control with display, also can be used for surfing
• Media room
  • HD Projector, 16×9 native mode
  • Closed caption
  • Approximately 120” screen
  • Surround-sound
  • Golf simulator :)
  • Remote control with display, also can be used for surfing
• Game room
  • ???
• Bedroom and other rooms
  • Access to central library for video, photo, music
  • Comfortable position for viewing from bed
  • Home automation / security camera
  • Internet surfing
• Outdoors
  • Projector for projecting “drive-in” movie on garage door
  • Closed caption
  • Appropriate screen for projector (sheet?)
  • Outdoor sound system (speakers which look like old-time drive-in speakers)

Plans for Home Entertainment System

Family Room

Item	Target year	Comments
HD-TV	Long term	Currently have 42" plasma but not true HDTV
Closed caption	3+	Currently have CC device but it frequently causes TV picture to become distorted
HD-DVR	?	Currently using ReplayTV, no HD recording. DNNA introducing TV card with ReplayTV software
Archive	<1	Currently over 1 TB of storage but need device with fan. Stardom Sohotank is good candidate, available from PC Pitstop ($129). Update: Bought it and it failed after 1 year + 4 months. I have now replaced it with a Buffalo TeraStation Pro II.
Backup of archive	3+	No backup. Need at least interim backup in short term--Media room PC?
Central library	?	Will this end up being the same as the Archive? Currently using media room PC
Region-free DVD player / recorder	?	Currently would prefer not to support BluRay and HD-DVD
Internet radio	?	Should be part of whole house streaming strategy
Security camera	?	Should be visible as part of HTPC set up, should be expandable to support additional cameras
Home automation	?	Should be integrated as part of HTPC
Streaming	?	Should be integrated as part of HTPC. Should each room have a PC? If each room has PC, this can replace ReplayTV unit
Place-shifting	?	For outside of house, is Slingbox the answer. For inside the house, a video streaming router...?
Internet surfing	?	Should be supported by HTPC
Remote	1	Should be able to support ReplayTV, also use to navigate PC. Gyroscopic mouse would be most intuitive for navigating

Give me my MP3 player, part 2

Since I bought Kyoko an MP3 player, I thought it would be nice if she could play it in the car. Of course there are car stereos now which have a connection available for your MP3 player, but a new car stereo can be a little pricey... But for $34.99, I can get a FM modulator which will play it over FM frequency so it can be heard on the car radio. The one I thought was the best was VR3 VFM8, which I found on SkyMall. It also has the capability that you can plug in USB flash drive to play mp3 files on the flash memory. Therefore the FM modulator itself also has play buttons. One advantage of this unit over its previous version is this unit can be songs in random order.

Update: On February 25, we finally got a chance to try it out... A little bit disappointing, mainly because we had to crank the radio about 3x higher plus put the volume on the mp3 higher to get it a fairly audible level. Perhaps most FM transmitters/modulators are like this. I mean, it would be a bit of a bummer if you're driving down the road and then you're listening to someone else's mp3 files, too. Also since you are not supposed to start the car within it plugged into the 12v outlet, then it's a bit of an inconvenience at times. I would be interested to see if the volume is any better when using a flash drive, but I don't have one off hand. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....... Anyway, it is still useful for long trips.

Give me my MP3 player

For Christmas, I gave Kyoko an MP3 player... After careful consideration, I got her the MPIO FL350. It has 1GB memory and weighs about 1 oz. Yes, that's right, one ounce. For Kyoko, weight would be a consideration, especially if she wants to use it while exercising, and this one, she hardly feels she's wearing it. I thought they looked pretty stylish too.

I also gave consideration to their FG200 which is approximately the same size and has about a 1" LCD and can play videos. I ended up opting for FL350 because of the choice in colors. It seems that MPIO is having some supply problems, though, as I have not seen the FG200 with 1GB available on their website for a long time.

Anyway, back to the FL350, not only can it play mp3 files (as well as wma), it has an FM tuner, voice recorder, and I believe line-in recorder as well.

Kyoko has been very happy with it... and when she's happy, I'm happy!

100-disc CD player

Last year we were able to use my old Aiwa 100-CD player to play Christmas CDs, although it did need a little "encourage" at times. This year,it really does not want to work. From what I can tell, it is a mechanical failure, not an electronic failure. I can see what it wants to do, but for some reason, it is not able to do it. It can work with a little assistance, but it requires assistance now every time you want to play a CD, so it makes using it quite impractical.

However, playing one CD at a time is also impractical when you want it as background music. Therefore, I decided to create mp3 files from the CDs. This being the first time for me to do so, it's actually quite simple. The only drawback would be for the disk space, but considering we have over 1 TB available for recorded TV shows, we can spare a few gigs for music. Having all your music available on your computer then make it quite simple to play what you want, whenever you want, and never have to search for CDs.

So even if I were to get the 100-CD player working again, it seems that having everything on a computer is much more convenient. Oooops, I shouldn't mention that to anyone to whom I might try to sell the CD player.

I thought that I bought the player in the late 80's, which would make the player almost 20 years old. (OK, 16 years old if it were bought in 1989.) However, it turns out this one was manufactured in January 1995, so it is one month from 11 years. I never used it to its full capacity. However, that is not too surprising for me. It's quite a nice looking piece of equipment with flashing lights for the elevator moving to load and unload CDs. The flashing lights are the main reason I bought it. You can even hook up multiple players together to get 200+ CD capacity. In fact, I was extremely tempted to buy other units. Good thing I managed to be patient in this case. Also very surprising for me.

Anyway, I can't quite get myself to throw it away yet, knowing that it seems that it is some mechanical failure which is preventing it from working. I was able to get a type of workaround using double-sided tape, but it only helped partially. With everything else I need to be doing, I'll put this unit away in storage for when I might have some free time to look at it again.

PS. Uhhh, anyone interested in buying a "partially working" 100-disc CD player?