Corner minimalist HT (everything wall-mounted w/ plasma)

My current corner is "stuffed" with a 50" LCD and a small stand. We're upgrading to a 50" plasma (Panasonic TH-50PX60U) and want to create a more minimalist look. The room itself is quite small for a home theater (14' x 14'), and is mainly used for watching TV. The current monitor is so slim, that actually the plasma won't be pushed any further back into the corner, but it will allow us to eliminate the stand.

Before:


I've chosen a heavy-duty articulating wall mount, the Sanus VMDD26S and the accessory VMCC-1 to mount the center channel just below the plasma so it's looking great at any angle we set the plasma at. (The mounts are overkill, but my wife really wanted the two-armed mount for more peace of mind.) With that decision made, we only had three things left: L & R speakers, component placement, and wiring.

I only have two components, a small receiver (Panasonic SA-XR55S) and a small DVD player (OPPO OPDV971H), so I've been looking at how to mount these discretely below the plasma. I've been looking for component wall mounts and although I found two that can swivel (Vantage Point makes a 3-shelf system, the AXWG-03S, and OmniMount makes the ECSP shelf), I don't know if they'd really look right for this corner because they wouldn't be aligned well with anything else, they'd always be off to the side and in the pictures I've seen of this, it just isn't right for us.

Then it struck me. Why not look into a 20" TV wall mount? They often have articulating arms, can support plenty of weight (not that my components weigh more than 20 lbs combined!) and would even work with a wire hiding system. EUREKA! Of course, there are zillions of options here, and we haven't decided yet. There are two different designs out there in general (This or This) and they both would probably work great. The center of the plasma will be about 25-30" from the corner so I don't need much extension to have it look good (and the components would look best closer to the corner anyhow, no need for them to stick out at all.) I feel like this is the "AH-HA!" moment of the project

I still need to decide on speakers and placement of them, and how it will all be wire to hide as much as I can with my less-than-Bob-Vila abilities. I'll keep the thread up to date as I move along.


For fun, here's a cardboard cutout of the exact size of the new plasma in the corner. (It's nearly the EXACT size of the current TV, minus the bottom speaker section on the TV) The placement is wrong, too high, but I was bored. I'll use the template when decided exactly where to install the wall mount:

Painted all the white walls (white) to freshen the house, and pretty much ruined the carpet. Checking into hardwood now....

Selling the old TV, watching on a 27" is sure fun! The plasma was shipped last night, should arrive Tuesday.

Not really feasible here, but thanks for the suggestion!

This is what we had to suffer through for a few weeks:


In my opinion, this is MUCH better


The rest of the goodies should be here within 1-2 weeks.

Thanks, but that's not going to happen here Wait til this is done in a few weeks - I think it'll be impressive, and different than your idea, will all look like it's being suspended in air by some magical force

We tried the standard small TV mount:

and we really didn't like that you would be able to see the mount sticking out, so we ordered the other style, the VMP W13S seen here:


Should look a lot better, and provide the floating / hovering / what-the-heck look we're going for.


I also ordered the speakers, the Atlantic Technology FS-4000 which combines the Right, Center and Left speakers into one long speaker I'll mount under the plasma (with the Sanus center-channel mount kit). That should be in within a week.

Let's move on from this point - it's mounted and staying where it is

When more items are mounted, I'll post pics.

Are you not seeing the picture posted 4/27? The TV has been mounted for 2 weeks.

Nope, I'm expecting the rest of the goodies within about a week. (Speaker, TV mount for electronics, etc)

We've also decided to rip out the carpet and install hardwood, so that will delay things a little bit.

Hard to tell from the pictures, but directly across from said wall is a sliding glass door that would reflect like crazy. The room was set up for a TV above the fireplace mantel, but it would have been way too high. We've had a TV in this corner for years, and love it there. We already love the plasma there, and the speakers just arrived!

The VMCC arms are set to 19" apart, and the FS-4000 has a mounting plate with dozens of holes you can use, so I'm going to bolt it to that wherever it fits. Given that the VMDD26 can support 175 lbs, and my plasma is 89 lbs, I am hoping that the 25 lb speaker won't be an issue. I'm still only using about 65% of the mount's capacity (which one would hope is also under-rated for safety's sake). I'm hoping to get the speaker up this afternoon, I'll post pics.

It's got a huge mounting plate the full size of the speaker (designed to mount to studs) with holes the length every inch or so. It also provides two types of keyhole mounts (flat and angled), and also a bottom shelf thing if you're putting it on a stand or table.

A few high-quality nuts and bolts from the hardware store, and the speaker is up!




(look out for the gator!)

Haven't mounted the devices yet - hold your final judgement until I post "it's done" in a few weeks

We have a chair, couch and chaise arranged opposite the TV. It's a strange room and we tried every combination, but with the fireplace, sliding glass door, and kitchen (which is just to the left of the couch) it's what we went with, and love it!

It's a Left, Center, Right. It does a really good job - the tweeters are on the very edge of the speaker, so it's about 40 inches between them. For a small room like mine (14 x 14) it sounds excellent.