I had this wonderful idea to build – or more accurate, assemble – a home cinema in the livingroom. I fixed an old computer to be the media center and all, all I needed was to connect everything together. However, seeing as I’ve got a three year old that I’m quite frankly not going to trust anywhere near loose cables, the projector itself cant be perched on the large cupboard, since the powercables I have isn’t long enough. I cant hide them the way I need for them to be safe from him. Which means I have no place to put it.
So, for now, I packaged everything down into a box, projector, speakers, bass box, wireless keyboard and mouse and all the powercables and the long HDMI cable… Right next to the Ubuntu media PC I just fixed for this very purpose. It stings a bit, not going to lie, because I had planned for us all to watch movies and such come winter. But unless I can find a way to draw all those cables in a way that safeguards them from my very hyperactive and curious 3 year old, and one of those platforms specifically designed to make sure a projector stays in place, that’s not going to happen. Bracket, I believe they’re called?
Atleast I know everything WORKS, flawlessly, because I’ve tested it out, and since it’s all packed down in one box, it’s a complete set – everything needed to make a home cinema (provided you have the wall space to project upon) is in there. There’s no ethernet cable packed though, but it’s not really MEANT to connect to the internet, but it CAN.
To stream netflix on that thing is technically possible, I just haven’t downloaded the data necessary, but it still has that DVD player, as well as those two 2TB harddrives filled with music, anime and such. Sucks too, because I dont want to get rid of those things either – I’ve spent YEARS hunting parts for precisely something like this in my budget range, and quite frankly, the amount of money needed to get me to part with all this.. The parts simply isn’t worth that much sold separately. Honestly, it’s borderline NOT worth the money for the convenience of getting a media center home cinema with DVD player, speakers, 4TB+ storage and internet connectivity and versatility of an actual Ubuntu PC.
As a package “all you need to get started” that convenience with the quality of the parts there is, probably isn’t worth half of what I would want to part with them. And the convenience of “all in the package” is the majority of that sum. That’s how much WORK compared to bought quality I put into this, and all those hours of work put into finding cheap parts good enough to make this happen, and the work to fix the PC itself doesn’t show. I mean, I know it’s there – noone else.
That said, would someone walk up to me with $1700 and ask me to hand it over, it’d sting, seeing as how close I was to finally have my Home Cinema Media Center, but I’d sell it. Hell, the parts are almost guaranteed not worth half that, but I’d sell it for no less because of the work I put into finding a complete set.