Home Theater Design - Hiding Your Flat Panel TV

For many families, the television has become the focal point for the activity in the family room or home theater room. This means it tends to take up a large portion of the room and is what much of the furniture and lighting is developed around. But that looks all together unnatural when the television is turned off.

There are a number of ways to hide a flat panel television when it is not being used by incorporating the feature into the overall home theater room design. Some use a static image to display a piece of art or favorite family picture. Others use elaborate mounting unites and screens to cover the television when it is not in use. A professionally design theater system can incorporate any idea you have to make the room beautiful both when in use as well as when not.

Below are some display options available for home owners as they consider how they want their flat panel television to be concealed when not in use.

Screensaver Displays
Since many LCD TVs are simple displays like those used by computer users, they can be set to display art and photos when they are not in use. Using a screensaver however does require the television to be on so it is not recommended for long stretches of time. It is best for use during parties.

Customized Art Covers
Custom art overlay options are becoming more common. A specialized piece of art on a canvas can be made to be placed over the screen when homeowners are not using the TV. This is an inexpensive solution that does not require any new wiring or customized mounting.

Many homeowners choose to hang their flat panel televisions above a fireplace. For a traditional flare, a wooden frame can be installed around it, thus turning your television into a mantel piece. Professional installers can also design an automated system that slides a screen cover over the flat panel.

Moving Displays
Pop-up and flip-down displays are the ultimate convenience for home theater owners. At the touch of a button, the screen can be brought up from an inconspicuous piece of furniture or down from the ceiling. This technique is especially useful with flat panel televisions that need to be installed at the foot of the bed; the television can be placed on a motorized lifting mechanism that can move the television up while watching TV before bed and down before you turn off the lights.

Other Considerations
Most home theaters are not comprised of the TV alone. Mounted televisions prove more difficult to integrate into an entertainment system because all the necessary connections need to be run through walls. Wireless technology for these applications is improving but is not yet fool-proof.

Custom home theater installers can offer advice on how to arrange DVD players and receivers to match the subtle look of a hidden flat panel television.

Choosing the right option to hide a LCD TV into a room's design can be difficult. The size and shape of walls or the way they are built can limit the installation options. Place the television in the appropriate spot for viewing, and then start considering installation options.

~ Ben Anton, 2008

Ben Anton lives in Portland, OR.
Learn more about the benefits of wall and ceiling mounted televisions at Ronny's home video and audio website.

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You Can Do DVD Duplication Of Old VHS Tapes

Most of us still have old copies of VHS video tapes stacked on our home and office bookshelves just collecting dust. When was the last time you actually used your video cassette player? If you are like me, it has been sitting disconnected underneath my DVD player for more than a year.

If you are in the same boat, then you will be happy to know that the copying process of switching valuable content from VHS tapes over via DVD duplication is really quite easy. It's a great way to preserve and also share your old tapes, whether personal or business related.

The process of converting to a DVD basically requires a VHS tape player, or a camcorder. Plug either the camcorder or the VHS tape player into your PC, if your computer has the ports for plugging in these types of devices in. You also need a minimum of 512 MB of RAM and a 2 GHz processor, plus about 20 GB of hard drive free space. And your computer also needs a CD-RW drive for the duplication process. You will also need a video editing software program.

There are several conversion options if you want to transfer VHS tapes to DVDs, and if produced properly, the DVDs can look even better than the original VHS tapes including formats such as VHS-C, SVHS, Hi8, regular, as well as Betas. Here are some tips for what to do.

First you will need to capture a VHS video to a computer video editing program using an analog-to-DVD converter. You would otherwise need to encode it to MPEG-2 format, then publish your DVD. This provides some flexibility to edit the video as you wish by adding transitions, music or special effects. One drawback is that it is time consuming.

You could also capture the video to your computer as an MPEG-2 using hardware capture devices that will convert VHS to MPEG-2, then author the DVD. Some inexpensive hardware analog-to-MPEG boxes offer good quality because the analog source video does not have to be converted to DV before it's encoded to MPEG.

The fastest and easiest way to convert a VHS into a DVD is to connect your VHS VCR or camcorder to a standalone DVD recording device. This works like a VCR, and the VHS to DVD recorder basically gives you a DVD copy of your tape in real time. However it is important to make sure your analog video is of the best quality possible because any flaws in the original video tape might be magnified when encoded to MPEG-2 and then converted to the DVD.

It does not take much time for copying VHS to DVD. However if you are not inclined to take on this kind of project yourself, a DVD authoring and production house will be happy to do it for you via their own conversion and DVD duplication process.

Social media writer Kristin Gabriel is the marketing communications director for Acutrack, Inc. (http://www.acutrack.com). The company enables customers to create, publish and deliver custom content for DVD and CD distribution worldwide. Ideal for customers who are selling downloadable content and are not sure how many units to produce, On Demand takes care of inventory, packaging and fulfillment. Acutrack's proprietary On Demand production produces and ship custom packaged CDs or DVDs one at a time.

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