Close enough to the end. The only things left require intervention of external forces:
A. Landlord to come and make a big hole in one wall (I already talked to him)
B. USPS to bring me a few new cables... (1 15' HDMI cable to be appended to a 35' cable due to a gross computation error.
and, 3x6' component cables to extend the mother of all cables that ended up too short after I decided to put the processor on the other side of the unit and on top, an 8' difference! and one other that I will mention a bit later in this post ).
C. The BO problem needs fixing as fast as QC can do it
In the meantime, for the rest, I'm all done!
Pictures (of course!).
1-2. That corner was a source of embarassement every time a visitor came. It's one thing to have a mess of cable at the back of a hard-to-reach entertainment unit. It is another to loose cables in a 9 sq-foot area next to your couch! All is clean now. Black power bar is grounded, white one is on regular (and old) house circuits.
Then we had the table that was there... it cannot get very close to the wall... I haven't put the headphone amp yet. But, as you can see, the cables are already there.
3. New back of the unit. Still a lot o cables, but I can see the floor! One of the reason I did this, among many, is that I was afraid to move the unit without endangering the A1400 with all sorts of loose connections and stuff that could create a big short!
4. One of the next steps: the hole in the wall. This is where the mother of all cables is currently terminated. It is not yet installed on the wall (to pass two doors) as I need it to bring component video and digital audio to my writing room until BO becomes OD.
Since the cables are not long enough, I will actually "terminate" the cables there, use connectors and pass the shorter cables in the holes. That way, if I ever need to split the signal for some other needs, I will have a convenient place to do it.
5. The new unit! I am very pleased with the new layout of equipment. Only two devices requiring physical interventions are inside the cabinet and they are the least used: VHS and HD-DVD. All the others are external (BD-20, Oppo 980, PS-3). The fact that I no longer need to use two HDMI swicthes also helps clean the inside of the unit. The component switch is very happy in its drawer. Very convenient to cross-connect so many wires! Pull the drawer and voilà !
There seems to be something missing on the top left corner, isn't there?
6. Axiom's crime against humanity! Now the ranting starts. As you can see on the picture, I have detected an incredible design oversight. 'They' have put the XLR connection WAY at the top right of the box. EVERYBODY knows that it MUST be on the lower left! Otherwise, people may pass cables that are 3 <i>inches</i> too short, confident that they were that they were interfacing with good designers. Tssk. I might write a letter about that!
A 3 feet XLR extension has been ordered as well... But not in the same order as the other cables as I realized the 'design flaw' too late...
And now for a bit of rest, at least physically. I still need to finish programming the remote control in advance. I will post at some other point what are the new possibilities of the new setup (what I can do and from where). BTW, I have already put my old QS8 stand in the back room... maybe in the not-too-distant future?
