We bought our coach recently and within the first few days had both of us knocked our heads on the front TV cabinet hard enough to require a break to leave the stars circling to settle down. Being 5' 10" and 6' 2" somethings needed to be done. Plus it was old and heavy CRT TV's.
After doing some measurements and research could the new Samsung 32" LED-LCD take the place up front from the 24" Sony CRT. It would also be 4 inches lower than the CRT allowing 4 inches to be removed from the cabinet.
Here is a before and after picture.
I tried to make a very similar picture to show the reduction of the height of the cabinet. The total modification to the cabinet was done in one day (except staining the bottom and a small issue with "Wood-tape", probably 2-3 hours work). All the existing panels was reused.
At the same time was the 80 pound plus 20 pound metal frame removed and replaced with a total of 30 pounds of TV and mounting materials. The TV is removable and the stand is in the cabinet. This allow for bringing the TV outside to for watching under the Awning.
The room behind the 1.2" thick screen allowed plenty of room for a computer to be added.
With a wireless keyboard and mouse combo and a few adjustments to the computer cabinet was this a very good Windows 7 Media Center. A TV Card, Firefly Remote, Wireless Network and SSD disk makes this a great setup.
The VCR and Surround sound was removed since the sound in the TV is really good. I will add a new Surround system at a later point. A DVD Drive attached to the computer and a WII for some Bowling and other gamin has taken the place in the cabinet.
The DVD player integrated with the Sourround sound could not play DVD's without skipping and other issues so I added a new Pioneer unit that uses HDMI and upscaling so regular DVD looks almost like Blue-Ray.
The rear 20" Sony CRT TV was replaced with a 26" LED-LCD TV too. This is mounted on a Swivel mount and has left a huge amount of space that I will convert to a DVD/CD storage space behind the screen. A new DVD player was also added here.
The total time to finish all this was 3 days of work and still missing a few finishing touches like the staining up front and some woodwork to make a better framing of the rear DVD player.
The cost was around $2.750, but now everything is up to speed with modern day electronics.
32" Samsung LED-LCD $600
26" Samsung LED LCD $400
Quad Core Computer with 8 GB of RAM, SSD Windows 7 Ultimate and more $1.200
2 x Pioneer DVD Players $220
WII Black Edition $330
And for the part about knocking the head into the cabinet have the 4" cut from the bottom made a huge difference. I have touched it twice, but no more Sun, Moon and Stars.
There is more detailed pictures on the website below.
http://www.3110.com/per/pictures/20101130-BeaverTVUpgrade/
