Cupboard for DVD & Sat box

Should be OK providing you've got good air circulation in the cupboard.

Good air circulation means good sized holes or slots near the bottom and top of your cupboard.

Yes, you need a remote control extender. This will allow yo to operate the boxes with the door closed. You will obviously not be able to see the displays, though.

Xantech is the dog's nuts, but expensive.

Not a good idea. The socket outlet on the wall is part of your fixed installation and you probably shouldn't remove it from the wall to fit into a cupboard. Rather, you should either cut a hole in the side of the cupboard to give yourself access to the socket outlet or use a 4-gang adapter to get power into the cupboard.

1. Modern hard drives will work fine at any angle.
2. You might have a problem with the DVD drive not picking up properly - the ones with tray loading in particular have a tendency to scratch discs if they are not horizontal
3. Check cooling - I presume there are grills on the top of those units which may have been placed with convection in mind

Blimey, are you sure? Doesn't sound like me. Perhaps I was drunk

Good point about the DVD drive Jim.

You'll need good ventilation or the Freesat box is liable to get very hot and fail quickly.

A remote extender should work or use glass doors (you can see the displays then too.

SteveW

Any? I really haven't checked for a few years - long gone are the days when they were *really* picky, but not so long ago they were still supposed to be aligned with a vertical or horizontal plane. If it were me I think I'd pull the case and get the drive's model number to check with the manufacturer first, just to be sure.

Agreed. 24cm depth and 18cm height gives me a box depth of 30cm - to the OP, is it not possible to extend the alcove into the room by 6cm by some decorative means, which would then give you the depth to let the boxes sit flat?

cheers

Jules

Since they use a fluid bearing these days, there's no real argument that mounting at a strange angle will cause uneven wear. And the force of gravity is tiny compared to the forces exerted to move the drive head around.

If you check the Maxtor Seagate FAQ, for instance:

"All Seagate & Maxtor's internal hard drives can be fitted sideways or upside down. As long as they can not be moved during use and get enough cooling it is irrelevant in which direction they are mounted."

Although that's still a horizontal / vertical plane, though, not at an arbritary angle. I agree it shouldn't really matter (think of laptops balanced on knees etc. and they still work fine), but it might be prudent to check (or just back up the drive's data just in case; I assume HDRs give the user the ability/tools to do this)

Interesting they say that's still an issue - I thought that had gone the way of the dodo; in the bad old days drives had to be completely reformatted if the orientation was changed, but I thought modern units with embedded servo info and more smarts managed to cope with this...

cheers

Jules

Realistically, it's in a PVR, he's putting it in a cupboard. The disk is far more likely to die due to overheating, and even then the only casualty will be a few hours of replaceable TV.

However, you need to allow a little for the throw due to the finite height of the box, plus the not insubstantial scart leads.

Chris

You two should be in a film! ;-)

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember David saying something like:

Sounds like a daft idea. More sat boxes are killed because of bad ventilation than any other cause. If I was doing it, I'd be putting a fan into the case at the lowest point, blowing in and up and making damn sure the hot bits were properly cooled. I wouldn't be doing this anyway.