I HATE Shopping for TV Stands… They ALL Suck!

[manikyath]

6 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

 

I fail to see how a closed cabinet with drawers improves on easy access while also being a pain to use when you have to switch around stuff and think of airflow problems.

it's called 'wife approval factor'. when you have a family with kids and people with taste in home decoration, you sort of want things to be enclosed. also - for a piece of furniture like that 3K isnt all that wild.. and yes.. most brand-name furniture is this garbage.

 

also - the fact that soft close hinges are straight up not a common thing blows my mind. and those silly soft-close dampeners are literally "sold by volume" levels of cheap.

 

if you want actually decent furniture - go to a propper woodworking company that makes things to size. chances are it's not much past the price of something off the shelf, and they are people who actually have pride in their job.

[SinistralFern23]

That 3k is probably going towards that marble top, you can get a custom built one for that price.

[Ultraforce]

2 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Linus, a man with more money than sense: Let me buy a $3000 TV cabinet with a marble top that I have to extensively mod and that turns out to be built just as cheaply as a random one from IKEA. Oh and let me try and dampen the sound of the doors closing while ignoring the huge metal grille that's causing the noise while wondering why the vinyl bumpers do nothing.

 

Me, an intellectual: Buy the longest cheap open TV stand with no vertical dividers.

 

Don't fuck around with airflow, cable management is a nightmare if you want to plug-in or unplug stuff (you don't honestly believe I have all that stuff constantly plugged in, right?) and I'd rather easily get to all my cables than hide them just because some visitors might not like to see them. You might notice this picture is taken from almost directly dead on, so if you're anywhere in a sitting position looking at it from an angle, all that stuff behind the stand is already obscured by the tinted glass shelves and the consoles on top. And if you're wondering why there are two PS3s, one is my partner's and she has all her saves on hers so I put it up there for her to play her stuff.

 

I fail to see how a closed cabinet with drawers improves on easy access while also being a pain to use when you have to switch around stuff and think of airflow problems.

Personally I can think of a few downsides for that style of open TV stand. First and pretty minor is you can just not want anything on the floor which that stand doesn't really do.

The biggest one that would make me want to go for something else is after one of the tempered glass layers shattered at our house sending the Switch and a cable box to the bottom level, I just want to avoid tempered glass when it's not much more expensive to do so. Otherwise, though, I do think that no vertical dividers is probably the right solution for a lot of people.

[iLikeBananas]

6 hours ago, Chahk said:

What's that USB card with separate controllers at 20:51 into the video?

 

6 hours ago, cramd said:

That is exactly what I was looking for as well. 

 

So after a quick google search I found this:

 

Sonnet Allegro USB-C 8-Port PCIe Card, 8x USB-C 3.1, PCIe 3.0 x16

 

https://gzhls.at/blob/ldb/a/f/7/f/a75a78e93d9b94f370419d2afd0deea202ba.pdf

 

I do not know if this is the same as the one used in the video.

[Westingham]

6 hours ago, brandorf said:

What is the wireless controller/keyboard he's using there?  I don't see anything similar on Amazon.

This isn't exactly it but it's a good place to start.

 

Rii i8+ Mini Wireless Touch Keyboard,Handheld Remote,LED Backlit Compatible with Android TV Box, Android Smart TV,HTPC,Raspberry Pi, Win 7 8 10,Mac OS https://a.co/d/gAQzt0l

[Mr.Porter]

Got a AC infinity usb fab connected to the ps5 to extract heat from within the compartment and push out behind tv cabinet.

 

The fan is installed backwards but you can’t see that when it’s behind the console.

 

turns on and off with the console and also has a speed controller ( low, medium, high)

 

I found this works best for me, given I only  have one device unlike Linus.

 

 

[dogwitch]

thank god i inherited my grams old tablet tops... open air and made of real wood.

[_Nexx]

While I would love to see an LTT take on a TV stand, cabinetry falls either into a category of mass produced "good enough" or something completely bespoke, with hardly anything in between, and probably wouldn't be too viable in the long run.

 

When looking at items that are mass produced, most often you'll find that these are composed of MDF/Plywood with veneer finishes. In this manner the cost of production can be held fairly low while the speed and consistency at which the product is made remains fairly high. CNC machines can tear through board-after-board of the stuff which yields volume. Since MDF and Plywood are composite materials, they have a few benefits in comparison to regular wood, with the biggest one being that variability between cut parts will be low. Again, consistency is easy to achieve.

 

The issues with MDF and plywood usually manifest themselves after a bit of time. MDF likes to bend and warp with moderate amounts of weight and heat and would require the addition of supports depending on shelving length, or rather thick boards. Plywood can begin to de-laminate when subjected to cycles of heating/cooling and dry air. These materials area also a bit troublesome in that their strength varies with thickness to an almost extreme degree. The difference between 7/16" MDF and 1/2" MDF may not seem like much, but that 1/2" board will be substantially stronger and rigid. The trade-off, of course, being weight and material cost.

 

Turning to actual hardwood, while neat in theory, presents a whole host of challenges. With solid wood you face issues of drying, warping, splitting, weight, and so much more. For a one-off bespoke item it's great because you can finely control the process of how the wood is shaped and make any corrections along the way should issues pop up, and they will. Working with large boards, cutting, gluing, sanding, etc., will relieve tensions within the wood and cause it to behave in ways that often work against you. There's a reason why butcher's blocks are thick as hell, and for the same reason a lot of the components for hardwood TV stand would also have to be thick.

 

Ultimately, the success of this would depend on the company actually producing the TV stands. LTT can design a banger of a product, but it'll mean little if either the cost of manufacture/shipping is too high, or the long term life of the product is 'meh.'

[bluehawk]

Anyone else see Linus hot gluing the shelf and ask themselves why didn't he remove the shelf and hot glue the IR then put the shelf back on

[Psittac]

What was the controversy with the Anker hub?  As in "should not be named"

[Techrocket9]

There's a Pro version of the Harmony Hub that can be networked (and even powered) by ethernet instead of WiFi.

 

Probably a little difficult to find new these days (with Harmony being EoL'd), but it's nice to take one "shitty wireless device" out of the control plane.

[Plermpel]

I mean, I like it, but where, did you put your amplifiers?

[Streetguru]

Holy shit, you bought a $3000 cabinet and hoarded all of the extreme edition pillows?

[GenChaos]

AV standard size descended from pro stage equipment, guess what size it was...

Thon makes rack rails with adjustable spacing so You can have any spacing You want

https://www.thomann.de/pl/thon_12u_live_rack_rail.htm

 

Back has rack rails too btw and all cables connect into rack plate so i can scoot it out and vacuum behind it. <ed> not that i actually do that </ed>

[Ashleyyyy]

18 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

 

 

is that a fucking laserdisc player bottom right? holy crap that's awesome!

[raiman264]

Did you consider to place the fan in the back panel instead of the bottom one? if so, why you ended up with that?
I'm thinking about that because I don't think I can hide a fan in the bottom of my stand.

Also I'm wondering if those strong magnets can actually do something against performance of the transformers like the Wii U power brick.

Besides that I actually like it how you plan the modifications in a pre-built cabinet so we can apply them, even if you could just design something better and make it xD

[Tappits]

12 hours ago, Psittac said:

What was the controversy with the Anker hub?  As in "should not be named"

Anker own another company that does home cameras, and that company lied about it not sending/storing any user data on external servers or something, so now we are meant to be outraged and not buy/use Anker products or there other brands for anything... LMG also dropped using Anker as a sponsor because of it. This happened the week after I spent over £2500 swapping out every charger at work for Anker ones, not that I would actually stop buying products from a manufacturer because they lied because I would never be able to buy anything ever again..  

[Tappits]

21 hours ago, Required said:

https://www.ioi.com.tw/products/proddetail.aspx?CatID=106&DeviceID=3036&HostID=2035&ProdID=1060235

Maybe that from the Company.

Sadly the are damn expensive.

According to the site that is Super-speed 5 Gbps per port, USB 3.1 Gen 1 and not the USB 3.1 Gen 2 with 4x 10Gbps controllers that is in the video, some one else has posted about the Sonnet Allegro which is 3.1 Gen 2 and have the 4 separate controllers.

[iLikeBananas]

On 3/10/2023 at 12:34 PM, GenChaos said:

AV standard size descended from pro stage equipment, guess what size it was...

Thon makes rack rails with adjustable spacing so You can have any spacing You want

https://www.thomann.de/pl/thon_12u_live_rack_rail.htm

 

Back has rack rails too btw and all cables connect into rack plate so i can scoot it out and vacuum behind it. <ed> not that i actually do that </ed>

yo, I love that chair. Is it height adjustable? Doesn't look like it, but I would love a height adjustable of this.

[Middcore]

1 minute ago, iLikeBananas said:

yo, I love that chair. Is it height adjustable? Doesn't look like it, but I would love a height adjustable of this.

That's a car chair riding on a wooden platform. 

[seanondemand]

Seconded on the importance of the "wife approval". We're both keeping an eye on a new TV and TV stand; the IKEA Kallax not being wide enough to fit a PS5 has pushed us to the breaking point, and now we're making a little money so we're trying to graduate from the IKEA stuff to something a little nicer. 

 

But re: the wife approval, maybe someone could help me out - would cabinet doors that are a "meshy" material be best, or solid doors, if I cut out some ventilation? Wouldn't having solid doors mean more directed airflow in/out of the cabinet?

[InsaneMcCain]

Can someone please tell me the handheld magnet pieces that he was using? Not to be confused with the magnet cable management bracket that he is making… 

[XNOR]

On 3/9/2023 at 10:55 PM, Avocado Diaboli said:

Me, an intellectual: Buy the longest cheap open TV stand with no vertical dividers.

 

I don't mean to be rude, but I wouldn't want that in my living room. I'd either set it up as a showpiece, displaying the consoles in an attractive manner, or hide them in a pleasing cabinet. The condition of these consoles doesn't quite look to be up to display spec, so I'd probably stick them in a cabinet.

[Avocado Diaboli]

22 minutes ago, XNOR said:

I don't mean to be rude, but I wouldn't want that in my living room. I'd either set it up as a showpiece, displaying the consoles in an attractive manner, or hide them in a pleasing cabinet. The condition of these consoles doesn't quite look to be up to display spec, so I'd probably stick them in a cabinet.

I think the fundamental difference from my approach to many others' is that I don't mind having stuff around that's visibly used. I don't need to hide my belongings in my own living space, not from visitors and least of all from myself. And I don't much care about having them all in perfect mint condition. They're old, they're used. That's how they're supposed to look. I'm don't curate a museum.

 

Displaying these consoles serves no purpose to me, I usually don't set up things that have a practical application just for decorative purposes. The consoles all work, I use them, no need to hide them in a glass cabinet just so they don't get dusty. And again, hiding them in cabinets just makes using them unnecessarily cumbersome. I approach my living spaces with pragmatism and simplicity, not with forced minimalism and style over substance. Form follows function everywhere and an open TV stand maximizes functionality where a closed cabinet minimizes it and a display case destroys it.

[XNOR]

1 minute ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

I think the fundamental difference from my approach to many others' is that I don't mind having stuff around that's visibly used. I don't need to hide my belongings in my own living space, not from visitors and least of all from myself. And I don't much care about having them all in perfect mint condition. They're old, they're used. That's how they're supposed to look. I'm don't curate a museum.

 

Displaying these consoles serves no purpose to me, I usually don't set up things that have a practical application just for decorative purposes. The consoles all work, I use them, no need to hide them in a glass cabinet just so they don't get dusty. And again, hiding them in cabinets just makes using them unnecessarily cumbersome. I approach my living spaces with pragmatism and simplicity, not with forced minimalism and style over substance. Form follows function everywhere and an open TV stand maximizes functionality where closed cabinet minimizes it and a display case destroys it.

That's fair, and I don't think there's a definitive right answer. It all depends on your preferences and situation. Children or no, your tolerance for clutter and it's impact on your mental health, spousal approval, your willingness to clean, you name it.

 

I will say I've had an open stand with consoles in them for a long time and I didn't hate it. I am now moving towards a more enclosed stand, mostly because I've finally got fed up with dust getting between everything and it being more work to clean. That's as practical a reason as any with form following function, just ending up at a slightly different conclusion.