Anyone building a wall unit?

[hingepin]

I'm designing a wall unit and am interested in putting my electronics in a bookcase with a glass white tinted door (obviously painting the unit white) so it will blend in better than a dark tint. Will the RF revievers work through the white tint?

Anyone have any experience in using white tint and RF recievers?

[stanger89]

I'm guessing you mean IR, which I'm guessing will have trouble getting through the tinted glass, but that's just my guess.

RF would have no trouble at all.

[hingepin]

Thanks for the correction. Yes IR. I'll do a mock up of a door and see how it goes.

[sic0048]

I also suspect you'll have problems getting the signal through. But don't let that stop you. You'll just need a simply IR repeater system.

Something like this.

[SWKerr]

You can get an IR Receiver/Transmitter ($40) setup and put one in the cabinet and one someplace inconspicuous. You could even use a solid door.

Make sure you have some level of ventilation as well. If you put an HTPC in it it will get hotter than you would think. Even a receiver without some ventilation will get hot.

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'm guessing you mean IR, which I'm guessing will have trouble getting through the tinted glass, but that's just my guess.

RF would have no trouble at all.

That's not entirely true. If the tint has metal in it, it will kill the RF frequency.

My suggestion for the IR is to get a blaster and mount it on the exterior of the cabinet/door, recessed or under a cloth grille.

[hingepin]

I'm still playing with the design in my head. I am thinking of putting in a cloth grill for the center channel, so a blaster/repeater behind that sounds good. Ventilation is a must if electronics are involved. For that, a couple or few well placed 120MM case fans mounted on the inside; intake/outtake setup. If I can get cat5 run from my basement through the house, I'll have a server room. As with on everyone's wish list, if Netflix, BD, and Hulu gets native support, I'll run a client PC. I have 90% of the stuff laying around. If not, I'll stick w/HD200's throughout. Also depends on what happens this Friday and what Comcrap does and if I want to spend the $ on HD-PVR's or not.

The mancave is coming along nicely, in my head. I'm sure the wife will object to most ideas and foof it up with her stuff!

[hingepin]

I found this:

http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-Remo.../ref=pd_cp_e_1

Expandable up to 12 devices, not that I'll ever have that many. But a couple sites I saw say that a plasma TV can interfere. So much for that Pany P50G10 I was looking at! The wife said she wants a 55" 120Hz LCD anyway!