barbex's smart tv recorder

when barbex of hamburg, germany, sent me this hack, i was totally overwhelmed by the nuts, bolts and wires. it is a hard hack, for me the tech-incompetent, but i do like the idea of building a multimedia hub inside a piece of living room furniture. you hide the ugly wires and still have a nice side table for your room. how cool is that?

inspired by the original idea from here, barbex took a year to build it, in between baby duties.

"for years i had planned to build a HTPC, a living room computer to record television onto a hard drive and serve as the multimedia hub for the whole house and family. after lots of drawings and concepts that never came to life i came across mp3-cube.de where they built a computer inside an ikea hol storage table as an mp3-jukebox. that was it! normal living room furniture to be used as a computer case for a living room computer, simply perfect!

the lcd screen nesting in the hol storage table

the hol multimedia hub in barbex's living room

my design is a regular computer with a small lcd-display and a tv attached as the second screen. i salvaged an old case for the mainboard tray, switches and hard drive cage, used all kinds of old hardware i had lying about and got the rest of the stuff i needed from ebay. and of course i bought a hol table from ikea and had a glass pane cut for the top. best system i ever built. and i love, love, love it!" link.

related hack:
> this hol hides a subwoofer