Modding a TV for my Dad

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Pingh

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Dec 1, 2004
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Hey guys,

This is my first project of this nature, and subsequently my first work log.
Fair warning, this project might take quite some time to complete.

My Dad has this old Quasar TV that's been sitting around in the basement.
It's long dead, but he refuses to get rid of it.

The TV was built into a piece of furniture and he's quite attached to it. It matches the rest of the decor he has set up down there.

I decided since it was just wasting space, that I was going to mod the TV and make it useful again.

Today I gutted the TV, and this is what I'm left with:

shape.jpg


back.jpg


There are two main goals for this project.
1. Replace the void with a new monitor so he can watch tv
2. Use the extra space to house an HTPC, and a few other things.

The opening is roughly 28 3/4" x 18 1/4" which leaves me with approx 34" for a new screen.

I'm not entirely sure which monitor/TV I should choose.
I'm looking for a screen with not much wasted space around it.
Preferably something like a monitor where there is only 1" or so around all borders.
I figure I'll have to sink the new screen into the case, and then use molding to make a clean transition.

As for the extra components, my initial goal was to convert the extra space into racks so I could just slide hardware in and out easily. However the casing isn't deep enough to handle a standard rack size. The casing is only 16" deep and that would mean (with the new screen in place) that the rack mount units would be sticking out the back almost a foot.

I haven't decided how I will incorporate the new hardware into the case just yet, so I'm open to suggestions.

So! I have a few questions for you guys to help me get started.
Do you know of any good monitors/TV's that would suit this project?
Also in terms of pc's how would you suggest using the space I have available.

Thanks in advanced.
 
This is a really cool idea you have here. As for hardware, have you thought of using a mini-itx setup? This board supports Core Solo/Duo chips, has a PCIe slot, 2 sata connectors and onboard everything (you'd want to fill that pcie slot with a dedicated gfx solution though).
http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/78_75/products_id/552
Or if thats not flexible enough, you thought of using mini-atx boards? You could either chop up a mini-atx case to make a rack, or you could build something from scratch. Just a thought.
 
Well there will be a lot of extra room in the case.
The reason why I wanted to go with rackmounts is so that I can upgrade things easily later on.

I figured this would be a good place to put network storage and everything else.

I can easily fit two normaly sized mid towers on either side and still have plenty of room left over.

I don't really want anything exposed though, and want things modular enough so I can replace them easily in the future.

But I'm open to all suggestions.
I haven't decided on hardware yet.

My main concern is getting a screen that will fit.
Depending on the dimensions of the monitor/TV that's going inside I may have to lower the base of case to accomodate it.

Once I know what screen I'm using I will have a better understanding of how much extra space I'll have.

So far I've been seeing a lot of 32" LCDs. It seems most plasma screens start in the 40" range and won't work for this project.
I figure I'll be using a 32" LCD and use moldings to cover up the gaps.

But again I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks again.
 
If you wanted to use a monitor then the best i would say would be the Dell 30" one (3007wfp) For a TV i would consider using sony, Pioneer or Samsung (there maybe others as well). An idea you could do would be to buy an normal LCD TV, build a small atx pc which is housed in that frame somewhere and link it up via s video and use it as an media center computer/TV.

Just an idea, keep it up this should be good :)
 
Well I've been searching around for shallow rackmounts and found a bunch that are 14" deep or so.

So I figure I'll be able to turn most of the void space into a rack.

One of the machines in the cabinet will be an htpc so it will act as a media player/computer tv.

The rest will probably be network storage and auto archiving of the data on my other boxes.

I'll take a look at the dell 30"
Thanks for the suggestions.
Keep it up.
 
I'd go for a value LCD TV (Olevia, Syntax etc) and go for maximum viewing area.

34 inches diaganol - you could either get a 32" LCD TV (w/ dvi and other PC inputs) or a 27-30" LCD and have room for stock side speakers.

I'd personally go for larger viewing area and hide some Klipsh or higher end Logitech 2.1's behind the 5x7 speaker holes. You'd probably even be able to hide the subwoofer in the cabinet as well.

the deciding factor I think is the angle of the LCD's diaganol length measurement.

BTW - Great idea for a mod. that's a sweeeet piece of TV furniture. They don't build 'em like that any more.
 
stormshadow said:
I'd go for a value LCD TV (Olevia, Syntax etc) and go for maximum viewing area.

34 inches diaganol - you could either get a 32" LCD TV (w/ dvi and other PC inputs) or a 27-30" LCD and have room for stock side speakers.

I'd personally go for larger viewing area and hide some Klipsh or higher end Logitech 2.1's behind the 5x7 speaker holes. You'd probably even be able to hide the subwoofer in the cabinet as well.

the deciding factor I think is the angle of the LCD's diaganol length measurement.

BTW - Great idea for a mod. that's a sweeeet piece of TV furniture. They don't build 'em like that any more.
Click to expand...

Awesome idea about the sub in the TV, but I think that'll be back, esp if he wants to put a HTPC in there. With the sub banging 'n' all, some things might get rattled out of place.

As for the HTPC idea, I say you should go MiniATX. Are you going to be gaming on this thing? If not, just get a good TV tuner vid card and a large HDD to record some shows. By the way, this is an awesome plan. Great way to integrate new stuff into the old. And I agree with stormshadow, they don't make TVs like this anymore. :(
 
Hey guys.

I was thinking about putting a sub in the cabinet as well, however sitting right next to the cabinet is a home theatre system that makes it somewhat of a moot point.

I've been looking at these dell monitors/tvs.
It seems that 30" dell monitor has a pretty decent screen resolution and not a awful refresh time, where as the 32" lcd tv they offer has 1/2 the resolution and an even worse refresh rate.

Which makes me wonder if I should be waiting until people start making good 30" lcd monitors or even a 32" lcd monitor.

I think I'll create a sketchup image of how I see this working later on tonight.
 
For the board you might want to consider a 6100 based board as they are good video stock, very o/c able and give you the room thats needed. I would also look at something like a x1900 all-in-wonder or something to that sort, this way you have the cards all in one. Make sure that if you are going to use it like a "TiVo" box that you get XP Media Center, it will make cataloging and that lot much easier. Also, make sure that you put lots of RAM, and a huge drive in there. Other than that looks like a fun project, my grandparents used to have one of those!!!!!!
 
Ahoy.

Well I've been looking into shallow rackmounts and found a bunch that are about 14" deep.
Which pretty much means I can still convert the rest of the wasted space into a rack of sorts.

Here are my sketchups (and the model in case people want to play around)

First a rear view shot:
sketchupback.jpg


In this pic you can see where I plan to put the rackmounts. I'm not entirely sure how many I can fit yet, and will have to experiment with the rails and see what I can come up with. If I can fit a 3U on each side I'll be happy.

To get the Screen to fit I'll have to drop the bottom shelf about an inch. I'll probably drop it just enough to let the screen rest on it, and build a frame to hold the screen in place.

Top shot:
sketchuptop.jpg


The red blob is a Dell 32" LCD W3201C TV mock up.
This is probably not the screen I end up going with, but I just used the specs because it seemed to be a nice 2" all around the screen. The actual viewing size of the screen is 27" x 15" which would work well in this project. The frame of the cabinet has a 1.5" lip that prevents me from putting the screen right up front, but this will work to my advantage as I can hide the rest of the screen behind the frame and use nice wood moldings to make up the difference.

There is a lot of wasted space behind the screen itself that I figure will house a kvm, and the wireless transmitters for the mouse/keyboard, and probably a router, and if it fits a ups.
The UPS may end up sitting underneath the bottom shelf.

Also I figure that space will be needed for air circulation since it will probably get pretty hot in there. I will need to figure out a way to deal with this eventually.

Cross Section:
sketchupcross.jpg

It's probably hard to see in this picture but you can see where the screen will sit and where the front of the cabinet is. I'll use stained molding to make up the difference.

Now the HTPC probably wont be a rackmount unit. It may be, but we'll see how that goes.
It will probably be another pc in an uninspiring case lurking in a corner somewhere.

Link to sketchpad file (link changed server didn't like the extension)

Feel free to play around with the diagram if you're bored.
It's pretty much to scale except I took a few liberties with making some of the walls thicker than they actually are.
 
Pingh said:
...Which makes me wonder if I should be waiting until people start making a good 30" lcd monitor.
Click to expand...

People do: www.apple.com/displays/

Pingh said:
I think I'll create a sketchup image of how I see this working later on tonight.
Click to expand...

Cool, I love Sketchup

This is a really great idea. My Dad used to repair these in our basement, so I grew up with these all over the place.
I hope you're going to consider upgrading the castors on the bottom of this thing for moving it around once it's packed with gear.
Or are you considering front access?
 
I think a 30" Monitor might be a wee bit too small for this cabinet.

Ideally if they made a 32" Monitor I'd be cool, but it seems everything in that range are TV's

Now I would -love- to make the front panels on the side (where the rackmounts will be) open up on hinges. But the whole cabinet was put together with glue and screws. If I can remove parts of it without damaging it too much I'll attempt to do that.

It also depends on how difficult it will be to build a frame for the tv that will take it's place and what that latches onto.

We removed the wheels that were attached to the cabinet, but the brackets are still there (the little white things at the bottom in the 2nd picture) so I can easily put those back in.
 
I have a 32" Sony Bravia TV that I also use to play video games on my PC. The resolution is astounding, and I actually have to turn the brightness down 40% so I don't do blind. The refresh is a respectable 12ms, and I have suffered no flicker or ghosting, even with my less-than-current graphics card. 32" will probably do you good, and it's sort of the threshold between expensive and really expensive. I found that 37" was nearly 50-70% more (at the time). I believ all TV's will have wall mounting capability built in, so in fact you could hang the screen from the top, or on a beam (or two) spanning the length. Brackets weren't cheap though, so you might want to check if you can fabricate your own. Eliminating the stand will allow more accurate placement, and free up space for cables and cooling.

This looks like so much fun. :D

PS> I don't know why text wrapping is not working for me.
 
TV.jpg

I think this is what you have in mind. I was thinking to mount the DVD drive in that space in the middle, with some glossy black Acrylic as a faceplate.
 
That's an awesome looking cabinet, I can see why he'd want to keep it. They just don't build stuff like that anymore. :)
 
Hi, keep on going! Seems to be a nice project!

Check out this LCD Screen --> Fujitsu Siemens Myrica

It´s like the Dell a 32" screen and even has 8 ms response time. And nearly half the prize :D I bought it some time ago and it´s great. Also gaming is no problem.

bye
 
themark said:
TV.jpg

I think this is what you have in mind. I was thinking to mount the DVD drive in that space in the middle, with some glossy black Acrylic as a faceplate.
Click to expand...


That's pretty close to what I want it to look like when it's done.
Except I'm not entirely sure I'll be removing any part of the front plate.
I want to try to keep it as clean as possible.

Also the screen will be sunken into the cabinet by about 1.5" and using the dimensions of the dell 32" tv the viewable area of the screen will be slightly smaller than the cavity. So I'll make up the space with molding.

Here's a mockup that's roughtly to scale.

mockup.jpg


Now that I further study your image I see you put gradient moldings too, so yea pretty much the same thing.
 
Cool idea for a mod. I 'modded' one of those tv's waaay back when. Me and my grandfather turned one into my first workbench when I was like 4 years old :)
 
So I've been holding off trying to figure out what screen I'm putting in there.

I've looked at a number of 32" LCD tv's but none that would really work easily with this case.

I've always had my eye on the Dell 32" W3201C, but have just been holding off for a bit.

http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/lcd_w3201c?c=ca&cs=CADHS1&l=en&s=dhs

However it's on sale now with free shipping, so ehh.
Odds are I'm getting it by the end of next week.
I'll sleep on it for a few days (the sale runs till the third).

If any of you guys know reasons why I shouldn't get that tv let me know.

Thanks
 
I've been wanting to do this same thing for quite some time. Hope yours turns out.

 
That looks pretty damn sweet. I can't wait to see the finished outcome.

My Dad and my Uncle did something like that way back when. Rather than a TV in it though, they used a fish tank.

Yeah, they're not so related.
 
The monitor arrived.
I only had time to unpack it today. I'll continue the project on the weekend.
For now it will just be a tv, but eventually as I get the hardware it will become the media center itself.

monitor.jpg
 
So the monitor worked fine last night.
Came home from work and turned it on to watch it get stuck in a reboot cycle.
It doesn't seem to want to come out of it.

Called Dell and they're sending me a replacement unit.
In the mean time I'll use this unit to mock up the wooden frame I'll need to build to house it in the cabinet.

Also taking this as an omen I'm going to put a ups in the chasis as well.
I've been looking around for a unit that protects coaxial but haven't found anything other than the mini monster cable surge protectors. I figure I'll start off with one of those and as more ends up in the cabinet move onto a real ups.

Disassembling the cabinet now. More pictures as they come.
 
How do you plan on integrating the speakers into the unit, since they are separate pieces from the screen itself, and doesn't look to have room for them in the primary opening?

Or did I just miss that from earlier in the thread?

 
uzor said:
How do you plan on integrating the speakers into the unit, since they are separate pieces from the screen itself, and doesn't look to have room for them in the primary opening?

Or did I just miss that from earlier in the thread?

Click to expand...
Pingh said:
I was thinking about putting a sub in the cabinet as well, however sitting right next to the cabinet is a home theatre system that makes it somewhat of a moot point.
Click to expand...
No speakers needed. He already has a HT system.
 
OKANG said:
No speakers needed. He already has a HT system.
Click to expand...
A sub and basic speakers are two different things. If he doesn't put speakers of some kind in it, he wouldn't be able to use it as a regular TV without turning on the stereo as well. While I enjoy watching movies and such with the stereo on, sometimes, if I am just watching TV, I don't want to have to have it on. A sub, on the other hand, is there to ENHANCE the sound that the regular speakers put out, as does the stereo.

 
I probably should take pictures of the ht system sitting next to the tv, it's a pretty standard 5.1 system.

Odds are 99% of the time I will be using the external ht system vs internal speakers + sub.

I've been contemplating the rack idea and based on the hardware I can get at the moment it's not seeming too feasible. I will probably end up putting two smaller atx cases in there on either side.

Now I'm working on making the two sides open up on hinges.
Once that's done I can easily mount the speakers on the doors and use those if I wanted to.

If I were to put a sub in the cabinet I would probably mount it facing the floor, but that would require me to build a box for it.

I'll think about it.
 
Well the original TV was a Quasar and Quasar is a division of Panasonic. So I think it would only be fitting to put a Panasonic in it. :p
 
I was contemplating a number of tv's to fit the frame.

The only reason I chose the DELL over anything was because the screen itself was outlined by 3/4" black border, and that outlined by a 3/4" silver border. This was consistent on all 4 sides.

So from edge of screen to edge of frame was 1.5” right across the board.

No other brand had that. Most brands have a 3-5” lip at the bottom of the screen (including Panasonic) and most of the other screens in the 32” range had attached speakers on the sides.

The Dell pretty much works perfectly, fits with very little work, and I can use the speaker mounting brackets to attach it to the frame.

Evidently pingh.com is down so the moment all the pictures are dead.
My apologies.
 
Working on it.
My domain seems to be down for the moment.
I have a ticket open with them to get it back up and running.
They claim it will be up by tomorrow morning.

In the mean time I was taking apart the cabinet and made a shocking realization.

Everything that I thought was wood is plastic.
The entire front is molded plastic mounted on mdf.
This makes modifying the case a bit easier in some cases and more difficult in others.

I will upload the pictures once my host comes back online.
Interesting stuff though.
 
And now an update..

So I started to take apart the cabinet so I could make the two sides of the front panel open up on hinges.

I figured it wouldn't be too hard, a few screws here, few there, cut around the outside and we'll have the panels off...

Well evidently they made tv's to withstand wwII back then so nothing is ever as it seems.

For example. The whole front panel isn't made of wood. It's molded plastic.
Example:

It looks like it's wood:
lookslike.jpg

But it's not:
butitsnot.jpg


Now that I knew that all the cosmetic pieces weren't even wood and could be removed in one piece, I decided to just take apart the entire front and see what I was working with.

I was hoping I could find some easy way of putting the panels on hinges.
Midway progress: (cabinet is upside down)

midway.jpg


...

3 and a half hours later...

...

I swear this tv has more screws than my deck...
screws.jpg


The cabinet was put together with glue and lots and lots of screws.
Screws hidden in places you wouldn't expect.
Also every corner had triangle braces. Each brace was held on with at least 2 screws, but in most cases 4.
Once the braces were removed, I found another 4 screws holding the boards in place.
Every board was held to each other with a tonge'n'grove joint and plenty of glue.

I realized to take the front panels off cleanly I would have to dismantle the entire cabinet.

And so I did...

The junk pile:
waste.jpg


The cosmetic pieces.
goodstuff.jpg


In that last picture the entire 'front' is plastic.
The sides and the top are 1/4" laminate ontop a wooden frame.
The felt you see there was behind the side panels, so when you looked through the wooden mesh that's what you saw. This -may- be replaced with something else.
Haven't really thought about it much yet.

Now the new frame will be a lot easier for me to work with. It will also provide ample ability for me to mount the front side panels on cabinet hinges so they can open up to reveal whatever I'll put behind them.

My idea is to put a custom/smaller mid tower on either side so when you open up the panels you have access to the front of the machines.

Anyway that's enough for tonight.
More updates soon.
 
I hope you took more pictures or otherwise recorded how it came apart, or getting it back together is going to be a real bitch. Luck!

 
Odd I never thought this would get bumped.

Well no new pictures, but I'm working on the front panels so they can open use and expose the drive bays of the machine behind it.
There is an issue I'm working on where the side panels themselves are slightly smaller than the width of a standard case, so I'll have to figure out something creative.

I'll post pics when I have an update worthy of them.

Thanks for the interest though.
 
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