How to Hide Your TV Components {and Still Work Your Remotes}

Kim {Tidbits&Twine}
by Kim {Tidbits&Twine}
2 Materials
$1
1 Minute
Easy
If you currently have to leave your cabinet doors open whenever you watch TV so that your remotes will work, OR if you're tired of having to look at your TV components, this post is for you! I wanted to share a little piece of technology that helped us tremendously when we were designing our TV media cabinet. Admittedly, this is more of a tech post, but trust me when I tell you that this relatively inexpensive piece of technology will help you turn ANY piece of furniture into a TV cabinet, allowing you to hide away the gazillion pieces of equipment that seem to accompany TVs nowadays. In the past, the decision on how to store your components was limited by the need for the components to be “visible” to the remotes that controlled them. It used to be that you kept DVD players, satellite receivers, and the like on exposed shelves so that they could receive the infrared signals from remotes. Or perhaps you used glass-front cabinets so that the signal could pass through the glass. Or maybe you would just open your cabinet doors whenever you were watching TV so that the remotes would work. When we started thinking about the design for our built-in, none of these options really appealed to me and so I enlisted Hubby to do a bit of research such that we could hide away all of the components and still easily use our remote controls. One company that Hubby contacted said that we needed a special remote that would work even when not in a direct line-of-sight, but with a $500 price tag, I didn’t really love that option. Another person told use that we simply needed to drill a small hole in one of our cabinet doors so that the signal from the remote could pass through. A hole in my brand new cabinet? No thank you! Yet another technician suggested that we buy an external infrared receiver that would sit on a shelf and receive the signals from our remotes. Isn’t that what I was trying to avoid in the first place?! Hop over to the blog to see how a $45 device changed everything for us.
Our built-in TV cabinet
All of our components are hidden behind cabinet doors.
{Probably the most boring picture ever posted BUT this is what we did!
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Kim {Tidbits&Twine}
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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3 of 6 comments
  • Shawna Shawna on Oct 28, 2014
    Wow, thanks! I'm really tired of our cabinet door being open all the time. Time to get one of those devices!
  • Jane R. Jane R. on Oct 28, 2014
    So how do you provide enough ventilation to keep the components from overheating?
    • Kim {Tidbits&Twine} Kim {Tidbits&Twine} on Oct 28, 2014
      @Jane R. There is a long slit/opening on the bottom shelf (behind the speaker in the picture) that allows the heat from the cabinet below to escape.
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