Building an invisible 4K TV

these days the center of many living rooms is of course a TV but regardless of where you put it because of all the extras that go with it things can get messy very quickly but what if we could make all of this go away leaving us with a beautifully minimal living space we've got some plants a nice cozy fireplace and that's pretty much it also it might appear because this is no ordinary fireplace it is in fact an invisible home theater as this video includes an ad from LG we've got a massive 75-inch LG qned mini LED TV inside here as well as a homemade 5.1 surround sound system with two subwoofers and it even includes a built-in gaming PC Blu-ray player PlayStation 5 and more all in one nice neat package that when you're finished viewing can be closed up to be hidden away leaving us with a beautifully minimal living space and the best bit is that it is of course all DIY let's get to it as you may expect wood is the ideal material for the main structure of this build and we'll be starting with two long lengths of planed 2x4 Pine these are going to effectively be the legs of the unit as they all provide strong structural support for everything from the folding side speakers to the TV itself to hold them parallel to each other the plan is to screw them to a large sheet of MDF this stuff is 18 millimeters thick so it's pretty heavy but it's worth it as it will make the unit super strong there are a few additions that need to be added to this before it gets mounted to the wall however the first of which is to add a few strips of MDF to the top Edge to make a long box which will later be the center speaker for the surround sound system above the speaker is going to be a chamber that houses all of the hardware that's going to be hooked up to the TV such as a PC console amplifiers and more but more about this later so after a good old Sam down it can now be primed and painted with the final color I'm going with a deep bluish gray as being a dark color it should be fairly unobtrusive when watching the TV in addition to looking super modern while it is far from finished we can at this stage bring it indoors which is just as well as there appears to be a storm on the way this is absolutely a two-man job but thanks to help from the original perks it goes up without too much trouble now before screwing it in place it's worth noting that there are various electrical wires in the wall as well as a water pipe embedded inside it so it's very important to Mark out the danger zones so that no disasters occur if you ever end up doing a project similar to this it's always worth Consulting with an expert before drilling into walls just to be on the safe side thanks to the Pine legs all of the unit's weight will be placed upon them rather than the wall allowing the wall to merely prevent the units from falling forwards still it's vitally important that it's done securely any failure here could result in you getting squashed by a TV which would be a pretty lame way to go so again consult an expert if you ever do anything like this yourself so with the unit now mounted extremely securely onto the wall we now need to start thinking about the next step which is of course to add the speakers now when building any kind of speaker one of the hardest things to do is actually choose the right speaker drives as there are literally thousands of options out there and their selection has a huge influence on the overall sound quality particularly as most drivers have a limited frequency range that they can actually reproduce well this is why speakers often consist of multiple drivers each handling specific frequency ranges so after much research and some help from the guys over at sound Imports I've settled on a selection that should punch well above their weight considering their cost and you can find links to all of them in the description below focusing on the drivers for the center channel for now I've got a single Dayton audio air motion Transformer Tweeter for high frequency detail which can be paired with dual date and audio reference drivers for smooth vocals using an app like Q speakers we can see that the ideal sealed enclosure volume for these mid-tone drivers is two and a half liters so we can use some dividers to make sure that each one has a chamber of this calculated Air volume and weld glue sets we can sort out some holes for the drivers pinning a router in place to some MDF with a screw allows us to use it a bit like a compass to make the required recessed holes for them although as the AMT Tweeter is square a jigsaw is more suitable here once this has been painted it too can be glued in place though I'm using some screws as well to ensure that it's a tight fit with no air gaps with the only caveat being that they need filling afterwards so that they can't be seen now unfortunately we can't Mount the drivers yet because once the filler has dried it needs sanding down which would of course just get the drivers all dusty and we don't want that so in the meantime I think we can start working on the side speakers that are the method by which we can also hide the TV these two can be mainly built out of MDF although the side that the hinges will be attached to need to use the same 2x4 planed Pine as the main unit giving the hinges something structural to be mounted onto While most strong hinges can be made to work here I thought I'd invest in some fancy heavy duty concealed hinges to go along with the whole invisible concept so that they will only be visible when opened as you've perhaps already noticed I actually made the cutouts for these much earlier on in the build while the main unit was still outside as it's much easier to do with it on the floor making sure that this is done correctly at such an early stage also allows it to be easily modified as required to make sure that it opens and closes nicely although it's always a good idea to allow for plenty of tolerance for adjustment later now before gluing them together it's important to again add the holes for the drivers the first hole is for the same model of mid-range driver we used for the center channel to keep the sound consistent but this time instead of using an AMT Tweeter we'll be going with a more traditional soft Dome Tweeter which still sound great but are much less costly this leaves us with one last hole to make which as you can see is particularly large and that's because we're going to build a subwoofer into each of these side speakers for a really impactful cinematic experience and we'll be doing some clever mixing later to make the most out of these as they are key to making the surround sound system sound amazing as these larger subwoofer drivers are so powerful it's important to add many braces to the back of the front panel to stop it from resonating and to separate the smaller drivers they need to be boxed off again with a two and a half liter enclosure the glue I'm using for all of these joints by the way slightly expands as it dries which is ideal for air tightness though to be doubly sure it's still a good idea to complement it with screws and with that they're ready to be mounted in place and again many hands make light work to match it with the rest of the build it can at this point be painted but to make them look extra special I'm adding a single strip of real Walnut veneer which divides up the front and gives them a really nice aesthetic with the speaker drivers added to both the center speaker and these new side speakers it really is starting to come together now one of the coolest things about these side speakers is just how smoothly they open and close which is of course going to eventually hide the TV now this is such a key feature of this entire build that I'm so glad this is working as well as it does one thing that you will probably notice is that we've got two side speakers a center speaker and two rear speakers now these are going to be behind the listener on the other side of the room as this is of course a 5.1 setup so we've got one two three four five speakers but where's the point one well that is usually a subwoofer and that would be somewhere else in a room but in this case with this build we've actually Incorporated it into the side speakers because these woofers go down to like 20 Hertz so we can make them pull double duty and to do that we're going to use some very special amplifiers what makes these amplifiers so special is that they have an onboard computer that you can manually program to process the incoming audio signal with a variety of algorithms these range from simple things like mixing or volume control to Advanced crossover filters timing adjustments and equalizers it's incredibly powerful stuff and should allow us to make an audio system that can genuinely rival high-end home theater systems as these boards feature four independent outputs we can use a total of three boards to bump this up to 12. one for each driver and as you can see they're mounted to an aluminum plate alongside the power supply but how do we get a Surround Sound audio signal to them well these days the surround sound signal is usually transmitted over HDMI and thankfully there are decoder boards available that can extract this surround sound signal and split it out into its individual analog channels perfect for providing a 5.1 audio signal to our amps we'll have some fun programming these later but for now they can be mounted in the top chamber and wide up to all of the speakers using cable clips to keep things somewhat neat even so it's not exactly pretty but that's okay as the plan is to hide it all by adding some doors concealed hinges are again ideal here only these ones are much smaller and while everything still needs a final lick of paint these hide everything inside the chamber quite nicely as there's plenty of room inside this chamber it's a great place to add any extra devices such as a games console and Blu-ray player and as there's still room left over how about a gaming PC unlike some of my other PC builds I'm keeping this one simple with an open frame concept utilizing a single sheet of aluminum holding together the main components this can simply be screwed in place to the space allotted for it and plugged in now despite all of these heat generating components the plan is to keep this chamber cool with two Banks of fans that will pull air up from behind the TV and expel it through the Gap at the ceiling so things are shaping up nicely but as you can see we've still got this massive area at the bottom that we still need to do something with and I thought it would be a great opportunity to complete the whole chimney breast concept by adding a fire the one I'm going with is long and thin which should match the unit quite nicely and as it's intended to be embedded into walls a simple MDF frame can be constructed for it allowing it to Simply slot in place with a mantelpiece finishing things off nicely though this might look like hardwood it's actually MDF with some more real Walnut veneer applied to tie it in aesthetically with the speakers and I think it does the job so the addition of this fire really helps to complete the look and I can't quite believe how cozy it feels simply with this warm glow and I think it will make a big difference to the room when it's in use now we do need to prepare for adding the TV at this point and for this we are simply going to add a TV wall bracket earlier we've already added the bolts for this which are held captive by some nuts at the back allowing the TV mounts to Simply screw in place while the unit itself is compatible with pretty much any reasonably thin TV having spent so much time on this it makes sense to go with something a bit more special and it's rather fortuitous because LG is sponsoring this video with their Q LED mini LED TV now this thing not only features quantum dot Nano cell technology for fantastic colors but thanks to the mini LED backlight it can actually darken various parts of the backlight which result in really deep blacks which isn't something that most LED based TVs can do so fantastic to see it here and I'm looking forward to seeing how it performs when it's on the wall this is definitely a two-person job one of the coolest things about this TV is just how thin it is over its entire back side which means that for projects like this it's perfect as it can just slide into it allotted place and then it won't get in the way when the speakers fold inwards to get the most out of its mini LED backlight it's got Dolby Vision IQ which can intelligently adjust the picture settings depending on the ambient light in the room and the content on screen so that it always looks good whether on a sunny day or a cozy Winter's Night now if you like gaming it is a great option as well it's got a inbuilt game Optimizer which gives you all these stats so presently we're running at 65 64 frames per second on the PS5 and the reason why you can tell that is because it's got AMD freesync so it actually only updates the panel when it receives an image from in this case the PlayStation 5. and all this is obviously thanks to it having built in HDMI 2.1 and it's got two of these ports so you can get up to 120 frames per second from either a PC or a PlayStation or any future devices if you'd like further details about this LG qned mini LED TV you can find a link in the description with which you can check out its full specifications as well as pricing in your region and of course a massive thank you has to go out to LG for supporting the project with such an amazing centerpiece and honestly it is perfect for a project like this now there are a few things left to do the most important of which is to actually test out the speakers and see just how deep they can go programming the amplifiers for this is surprisingly easy as any changes can be heard in real time allowing the perfect crossover points and gain levels to be easily dialed in for pleasing sound rendition the audio for the left and right channels is incredibly Rich thanks to the subwoofers going down to 20 Hertz but the center channel sounds a bit thin simply because of the limited size of its drivers but this is where the amps really shine as they have the ability to split and mix the audio signals so we can take frequencies that are too low for the center channel to reproduce and mix them into the signal that goes to the main subwoofers as they both play this extracted signal equally loudly it will appear to originate from the center making for a center channel that is incredibly rich we can also use this mixing ability to play the LFE subwoofer signal on both subwoofer drivers too so overall it's an efficient way of getting the most out of these drivers some of you will have noticed that I've gone with a sealed rather than ported design for these subwoofers and the reason for that is for tighter bass and also because the room size itself boosts space so having the subsealed results in it being flat down to about 25 Hertz anyway rendering a port somewhat unnecessary and it does sound fantastic it really is up there with some of the top home Cinema setups I've ever heard and it definitely gives the impression of being in an actual Theater which is really really cool so very good on that front but this does leave us with one last thing now which is to see how invisible it is when it's closed up and one thing that you may be anticipating will be apparent here which is of course there are some lines where the doors meet but there is something that we can do to make these much less visible and surprisingly it's as simple as adding a small overlap of masking tape that once painted does a great job of concealing the joins while we're at it we can add some finishing touches as well which not only help to distract the eye from any remaining lines but really add to the overall look as well so I hope you guys have enjoyed seeing the build process of making an invisible home theater and of course a big thank you to LG for sponsoring this video and sending over their qned mini LED TV for it and you can of course find links to it down below also in the description you can find a 3D file that you can inspect to get various dimensions of this build and get a feel for how it all fits together if you'd like to build one yourself and you can of course visit the Discord server and Forum if you get stuck but other than that I'm Matt you've been watching DIY perks and I hope to see you next time goodbye for now foreign [Music]

Channel: DIY Perks

Views: 3,369,474

Keywords: lg qned, mini led tv, qned tv, best tv, 4k tv, large tv, best gaming tv, 75 tv

Id: 2fX1qYMcfgs

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 17 2022