day dreaming: run *everything* headless?

Am organizing the media cabinet under our TV for a new year's party tonight: various game boxes and a PC for the kids to play while the adults party, media players, etc.  It's a rats nest of cables, and--yeesh! --I'm removing it all just to expell the accumulated dust.   Couldn't help thinking it would be nice to stack them all neatly "somewhere" (not sure where "somewhere" would be, but preferably somewhere dust free) and just have one thin ethernet cable (or something) to the TV, so I can be done with this explosion off cables once and for all. That got me thinking maybe some cocooner here maybe already did that?  I suppose an  alternative would be to consolidate everything onto a single PC platform and liquidate anything which doesn't fit that paradigm.  Either that or just find a way to manage all these wires (and dust) better.  ... Anyhow, this problem must be fairly common.  What are the best solutions, or is everybody else doing this too?

Short of putting everything into an enclosed cabinet you're stuck on the dust problem.  The idea being you use a cabinet with filters both in and out and set up a fan of some sort to force the airflow.  Otherwise you'd overheat the gear.  Then you're (mostly) just cleaning the filters.
 
Otherwise, if it's open then neatly bundling the wiring and securing it allows cleaning without as much risk of disconnecting things.
 
Consolidating is like the Holy Grail... you won't ever be able to get everything tweaked properly.

Here family room multimedia is now only one AVR and XBMC box on a shelf made for much more. 
 
Modded a custom glass door multimedia cabinet except there is nothing in it yet sitting next to the currently used shelf.
 
Years ago "child proofed" the old multimedia wood and glass cabinet.  (difficult to make it look aesthetically pleasing).
 
 
Unrelated to running everything headless....
 

 
This is what a burst salt facility looks like
 
It's an over-seasoned mess, really.
 
Morton Salt
 
Morton Salt is an American company producing salt for food, water conditioning, industrial, agricultural, and road/highway use. Based in Chicago,  the business is North America's leading producer and marketer of salt.
 

Last year I moved all of my living room A/V gear (AVR, STB, SageTV extender, PS3, DVD Player, and speaker selector) to a closet adjacent to our living room.
 
I had to pull power into the closet (as practically no standard residential closet is wired for power) and added a UPS. I put a small 14" SMC in wall, which has multiple Cat5E and a coax for cable back to my main SMC as well as coax for 2 subwoofer locations. Due to the number of wired (network) devices in the closet, I ended up putting an 8-port gigabit switch in the SMC as well.
 
For IR control, I used a Xantech kit; I've got an IR receiver on top of my TV and IR emitters to the various equipment in the closet.
 
Since I starting playing with SageTV (which wasn't all that long ago), the server and HD-PVR tuners have been in my office (BR #3). I'll be building a rolling cabinet later this week to move than and upgrade my networking equipment. For S's & G's here's a model that I was playing with for the cabinet:
 

 
I've already got all the wood... just need to get out to the workshop and get to building. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I've had 2 co-workers close on houses this week and both of them asked me to come do some electrical work, so my projects have been delayed - at least my projects are being funded

The cabinet is 2 feet deep, so I'm thinking that putting a false back on it, with the nest of cables tucked out of site behind the false back would at least give the appearance of tidiness.  It would probably mitigate dust as well.  No doubt zip ties or the like would help, but no time for that today.
 
I thought there might be some kind of elegant cable organizing scheme to manage the sprawl, but I'm not hearing that here.  I also thought some kind of unifying KVM might be able to reduce it all to one cable, but so far I'm not hearing that either.  
 
Happy New Year!

I use those cable organizer things attached to the finished side of my desk.  I have since put a book shelf in front of the desk.  The little stick on cable organizers are still their.  I started to use them for the back of the older media shelf and while they are there I am not using them today.
 
I googled for images and do not see any today.  The ones that I have are multiple little circular plastic which snap shut (different sizes).

Here are how all my home theater devices are "organized."
 

 
I went crazy one weekend and (somewhat) neatly mounted them all to a flat surface which hangs vertically in a loft area where I have all my other equipment (cable modem, router, ISY, NAS drive).  This system is comprised of a SageTV, Roku, Apple TV, and Fire TV box all hooked up to a 4x4 matrix that feeds four TVs in my house via HD-BaseT.  A Xantech system routes all the IR.  Mounted on the backside are the power strips populated with the various wall warts.  One white power strip cable (seen coming out from the right side) feeds the beast.  Zip ties, gaffers tape, and Velcro straps hold it all together.  An occasional blast of canned air keeps it all dusted nicely.
 
-Randy

We've got a TV console/fireplace piece of furniture (electric fireplace/heater) that has a cubby for AV devices.  It has a back panel with a couple of U-shaped cut-outs top & bottom.  What makes it interesting is that the panel is held onto the back of the cabinet using magnets.  The panel has a couple of pieces of flat metal that stick to the magnets mounted in the recessed edge on the back of the cabinet.  This makes for a nice way to hide how the cubby looks from the front, but still allows for easy removal of the panel.
 
Now, you could also just move the whole thing somewhere else, but game consoles are problematic.  Many of them pretty much require the console and accessories be at the front of the room.  Especially kids games like Skylanders or Disney Infinity.  Those both use a USB-connected accessory for the game pieces.  It's a bit of a rats nest figuring out how to extend USB, while not having the devices freak out.  So don't assume you can shove the game consoles off to a cabinet somewhere.  

wkearney99 said:

We've got a TV console/fireplace piece of furniture (electric fireplace/heater) that has a cubby for AV devices.  It has a back panel with a couple of U-shaped cut-outs top & bottom.  What makes it interesting is that the panel is held onto the back of the cabinet using magnets.  The panel has a couple of pieces of flat metal that stick to the magnets mounted in the recessed edge on the back of the cabinet.  This makes for a nice way to hide how the cubby looks from the front, but still allows for easy removal of the panel.
 
Now, you could also just move the whole thing somewhere else, but game consoles are problematic.  Many of them pretty much require the console and accessories be at the front of the room.  Especially kids games like Skylanders or Disney Infinity.  Those both use a USB-connected accessory for the game pieces.  It's a bit of a rats nest figuring out how to extend USB, while not having the devices freak out.  So don't assume you can shove the game consoles off to a cabinet somewhere.  

Click to expand...

 
I'm on the same page as you.  The least effort fix is going to be the cover-up: a false back (e.g. in my case a melamine board) with the notches/holes/gromets for cables to pass through.  Then mount it against stops with magnets or Velcro or some other reversible fastener to hold it in place.  Or, perhaps make it self supporting, so that it just slides in and out to whatever depth desired (which might well vary over time as the devices upgrade and evolve).

randyth said:

Here are how all my home theater devices are "organized."
 

KanukDuo.JPG
 
I went crazy one weekend and (somewhat) neatly mounted them all to a flat surface which hangs vertically in a loft area where I have all my other equipment (cable modem, router, ISY, NAS drive).  This system is comprised of a SageTV, Roku, Apple TV, and Fire TV box all hooked up to a 4x4 matrix that feeds four TVs in my house via HD-BaseT.  A Xantech system routes all the IR.  Mounted on the backside are the power strips populated with the various wall warts.  One white power strip cable (seen coming out from the right side) feeds the beast.  Zip ties, gaffers tape, and Velcro straps hold it all together.  An occasional blast of canned air keeps it all dusted nicely.
 
-Randy

Click to expand...

This is very interesting.  Is a "4x4 matrix" some kind of remote controlled patch panel, so that any TV can get the output of any box via HD-BaseT?  Sounds very clever, and maybe it even completely empties the media cabinet by moving it all to the loft area.  This sounds like it may be what I was daydreaming about.   Cool!  And you've already done it.  Even more cool!

If you need a source for magnets for holding the cover panel in place, Lee Valley and Rockler sell magnet sets for this sort of thing.
 

NeverDie said:

This is very interesting.  Is a "4x4 matrix" some kind of remote controlled patch panel, so that any TV can get the output of any box via HD-BaseT?  Sounds very clever. 

Click to expand...

 
Yes, that's exactly what they do.  Very useful devices.  You can get ones with built-in HD-BaseT outputs, but I have a regular HDMI unit from Monoprice.  One of the TVs is close enough that I feed it with a long HDMI cable; the other three go through HD-BaseT extenders & Cat5 cable.
 
-Randy

This isn't nearly as unobtainable as you might think.  My first thought reading this was a matrix switch - or even HDMI switcher if there's only one display (matrix switchers are great for like 8 sources shared amongst 4 TV's); but then again, for a standard single TV, what about just a good Stereo receiver that has video switching?  that's what I did in the master bedroom so the components could be stacked around the corner and only have one cable coming from the TV. 
 
As for hiding the mess, my ideal solution is to use this cubby we have downstairs... basically on the left side of the fireplace is a narrow cubby built into the drywall, and on the right it's the same height (like 6' inside) but really wide... so the thought was that the one on the left could very easily be turned into a built-in AV rack with a glass door and vents top and bottom with an air filter - then just have a small conduit over to the TV side above the fireplace to connect things.  This could house the whole house audio, matrix switcher, HTPC, etc.  Wife would rather have bookshelves there... since we're an an impasse, it currently houses a giant pile of kids' stuffed animals.

The tricky part lies in the behind-the-scenes adventures of HDMI negotiation.  The TV, receiver and source devices all have to be able to play together nicely.  This is no small challenge, and all of the vendors finger-point to the others when it doesn't work.  The biggest problem is losing quality of the audio, video or both because of 'least common denominator' results from negotiations.  As in, the least feature-rich device forces everything else to dumb down.  
 
There's "more to it", of course, but tread carefully if you start moving toward using a matrix.  
 
Most receiver multi-zone schemes are often a disaster and should be avoided.  At least not until you get into the higher price-brackets.  If you want separate rooms then, really, you get separate receivers for them.  Trying to use one receiver to drive more than one separate room ends up with a VERY LOW wife-acceptance-factor.
 
There's a fantastic website, avsforum.com, that's WELL worth reading for all kinds of info in this area.  I'd venture most members here are also on that site too.

It's ancient history now, but I had an HDMI switcher (circa 2006 or thereabouts) which would occasionally cause the HDCP  to have a conniption, whereupon we had to reboot the player, the switcher, and/or the HDTV.  You're exactly right: exceedingly low WAF.  Thankfully, newer HDTV's come with a lot more HDMI inputs, so upon upgrading we happily ditched the switcher.  I would hope that by now  the switcher wrinkles have been ironed out, but maybe they haven't.
 
I suppose the beauty of switching just HDMI would be that the incoming HDMI cable could simply plug directly into the HDTV--no converter box or extra-wall warts/wires to clutter things  or collect dust.  In my particular case, I already have a 2" smurf tube to the media center, so it's worth my looking into it.  It might even be less cost/hassle than doing a well executed false cabinet backing.
 
As for dusting, I really like randyth's rack arrangement where he just blasts the dust away with a few puffs of canned air and he's done.