Custom Entertainment Center+ check out my setup

Hey guys,
I wanted to share my setup with everybody. My equipment includes:

Panasonic th50pz800U
Panasonic BMP-BD35
Cerwin Vega CVHD 5.1
Pioneer VSX-01 TXH

Peerless SA760PU
Tripp Lite HT10DBS

My favorite part of the whole setup is the furniture (haha, that may be sacreligious on a forum like this). My Dad built the entertainment center from scratch. The top piece is a slab of maple, with walnut butterfly inlays, the base is curly maple with walnut supports. I contributed a little in the construction, I powerplaned about an inch of wood from the maple, cut out three out of five of the inlays (both sides of the board are finished), and helped with overall design.

My dad and I also installed all of the speakers. In one of the pictures you may be able to see that the base boards are not repainted yet. This room of the house has no attic or crawl space, so we ran the wire along the wall around the room for a clean install. I used the powerbridge to get power to the tv.

This is my first house, so some of the the furniture and fixtures still suck, and needs more decorative stuff, but at least I have a sweet home theater. My next goal is to get something to deliver my music to the receiver (htpc, logitech squeezebox, ... suggestions welcome), then a game console, then who knows.

Would love to hear everyone's thoughts.

-Dave

I'll be honest about the CVHD, I had a problem with the subwoofer right off the bat. It didn't work at all, had to send it back to the company I got it from (A1components.com) and they said an internal wire was disconnected from the sub, so simple fix, but a lot of hassle. They paid for shipping both ways luckily. One of the knobs used to slide into the mounting brackets for the speakers was also machined to the wrong diameter. You couldn't tell by looking at it, but it was impossible to fit into the bracket, so it is lucky I wasn't mounting all 5 speakers. Thirdly, the drywall anchors that came with the speakers were flimsy and a couple broke in the dry wall, so two out of the four speakers are only mounted with three screws, though they are still sturdy.

The system does sound great though, and I think they are probably the best I could get for the price that I paid ($600). I based my purchase mostly on reviews from cnet and buyers that posted reviews on various sites around the internet, the price, and the specs. Unfortunately there was no way to listen to them before a purchase, but that was the case for a lot of the other speakers I was interested in too. Even though I love the way they perform, I have to say that the problems I listed above would make me hesitant to recommend the package to other people since it makes the quality control look very suspect.

hmm, hadn't thought about that, I think I will try moving the center channel forward and see if I can hear a difference. Not much I can do about the L/R speakers though, I suppose that problem would have been avoided had I put them on stands out to the sides of the entertainment center. What do you think about having the center channel on the top shelf inside the unit? I could move the whole thing over about a foot and a half in either direction to keep the center speaker lined up with the middle of the tv and have the speaker on the front of the shelf. I wonder if the asymmetry of the unit with the tv may even look better than having it directly underneath?

I think you misunderstood, I was saying I could move the whole piece of furniture to the left or right in order to keep the center speaker at the center of the tv since there is a partition in the middle. But in any case, either my equipment is not audiophile enough or my ear is not audiophile enough, because I can't hear a difference with the center speaker moved to the front edge of the tv stand, so I don't think I'm going to go to a whole lot of trouble to fix that one thing. I appreciate everyone's input so far.