Have you tried the AVG forum? I have not been there for a long time, and many of their setups are way over my head, but they've been helpful to me in the past. PS: Sounds like you are on a budget, but even so, you may want to consider the whole house systems they now make where you store everything in a computer-like device as MP3 files and stream them through the house. You can kick the tires at your local home audio store (if any are still in business.) Lynne

I was wondering if anybody knew of a good book/magazine they could recommend about setting up a home audio visual system. I don't want it to be geared only to home theaters, but would like some resource that discusses a system for multi-purpose use--t.v. and music. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

Hi Caroline, wow, that is a challenging space! When are you doing your "four seasons" room? I'm just wondering because it seems like the things you want and your DH has agreed to are a fairly large undertaking, in time, expense, and big furniture that might be difficult to repurpose. What will this space become when you have the new TV/company space? Also, if I may ask, what region of the country do you live in? I agree with you about not wanting the open storage. The picture you posted with those open shelves is my least favorite, although I realize you were really looking at the bottom cabinets. The wood against that green wall in that picture is unattractive, in my personal opinion. Also, it's really, really hard to pull off open shelving or even open bookshelves unless you're super organized and have some very nice things to display; otherwise it just looks messy and cluttered. The white unit is by far my favorite, because it looks the least "heavy." I know your DH wants hickory, but, and this is just my personal opinion, a long room like that with wood floors and then a massive wood wall structure just looks very unbalanced to me. The hugeness of the entertainment center and TV just completely dominate the room. The white one lightens up the whole room and just automatically looks cleaner and not like a mess. I would hope that you're not planning to completely fill every inch of shelf space; if you can balance the space on either side of the TV, that would be nice. My understanding is that you want the bottom cabinets to hold over-sized photo albums and photography equipment? That seems like a great idea! I think the whole concept is solid. I would just urge you to think about lighter colors, and using white areas, i.e. not filling all the space, giving it a light, airy look to counter balance the room both spatially and color wise and not make one end "wood heavy." Also, think about what you want that room to be when it's no longer the TV lounge. Maybe a kind of library/quiet space/conversation room? Perhaps where the TV was you could do a small gallery wall-or one big work of art, with a few smaller framed pieces on the shelves, breaking up the space between the stacks. Just some thoughts.

Depending on your budget, the best way to accomplish this is to use a multi-zone A/V receiver from a company such as Denon. You will be able to control everything with your phone or a remote control, setup individual speaker zones and have different sources playing in each zone (or the same source playing in all zones at once). Moving on to the speaker situation, ensure that you have proper soffits built to house each speaker as well as a removable grill where you can service and/or replace the speaker(s) over time. This is one of the biggest mistakes people make when installing a whole home system. They buy everything, have it installed, and then a year or two down the road something goes wrong and it's a nightmare to fix. I always design my soffits a bit oversized in case the client decides to change speakers down the road.