This whole fireplace and media center area was designed by me and custom built by my brother. The TV is a 52" Sony LCD.
That's an Xbox 360 S Kinect mounted between the TV and cabinets.
Below this rack of components are 4 drawers that can hold about 300 DVD cases. The drawers hold mostly my action adventure, Disney DVD's, Blu-rays and box sets. The components making up this 7.1 sound system from top to bottom are: Xbox, VHS player, Dell PC, Cox cable box, LG DVD player, and the Receiver. I've listed the specs after all the pictures.
Lots of storage for DVD's and CD's in the cabinets below the TV. With close to 1,000 DVD's I copy most of my retail DVD's (originals are perfectly preserved this way) and then store them in storage tubs. The upper shelves in the cabinets hold hanging DVD sleeve cases as shown here. The drawers and hanging files make it a breeze to keep everything alphabetical. My Logitech K400 keyboard touchpad is resting on top of the DVD case.
I have a door on my patio to access a walk in media room behind the media center. This provides easy access to the back of the components and it's where my modem, router, NAS and stuff are. It also gives me some storage space. There's a small monitor mounted to the framing behind the LCD. A full keyboard and mouse are also available. I also use Radmin on my laptop to remote in.
Back of components
COMPONENTS AND SPECS
Sony LCD KDL52W3000
Xbox 360 S Model 1439
JVC VHS player HR-S7600U
Dell Vostro 220 Slim
Cox cable box
LG BD630 Blu-ray
Sony STRDA5300ES Receiver
Speakers (7.1): Mirage AVS-500 Series
Subwoofer: Velodyne VLF-1012
Monster Monster AVL300 Universal RF Remote with Omni RF extender & IR cables. (I don't use IR to control anything)
HTPC
Dell Vostro 220 Slim
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 w/VT 2.93GHz
SAPPHIRE 100323-2L Radeon HD 6570 1GB
4GB RAM
Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-bit
Two 250GB 7200RPM Hard Drives
LG Blu-ray RW BH14
Logitech Wireless Touch Keyboard K400 with Built-In Multi-Touch Touchpad (920-003070)
Official XBMC Remote for iOS
Mobile Mouse from
www.mobilemouse.com
EXTERNAL DRIVES
Micronet Fantom GreenDrive 2TB quad interface GD2000Q, 7200rpm
Synology DS411+II NAS with 2 4TB Hard Drives in Raid
Network
D-Link DIR-655 Wireless 802:11g/n Router
Netgear 8 port 10/100/1000 Mbps Switch GS608
Wired cat 6 throughout house
Logitech MX 5000 Laser Cordless Desktop Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse
I started out with this, but it wasn't ideal. The keyboard is large and takes 4 AA batteries. The Mouse has a separate powered docking bay. Even though the keyboard is turned off, it is constantly draining the batteries, so they don't last long. I just switched the Logitech K400 and so far it's very nice. No too large or too small. The only drawback, which I knew about before buying, is that the K400 isn't back-lit.
Logitech Touch keyboard K400
If you want to use the K400 with the Raspberry Pi, than you should read this post to learn how to get it working due to a timing issue.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=152136
Monster AVL300 Remote
I've had this since 2007. I also set up 3 others for family members. One button to turn everything on (including setting the inputs) and off is a necessity. The pairing isn't very intuitive and can be a real pain. It doesn't always send the command to every component at times. Pressing the Help button wizard will usually resolve the issue quickly, although at times it can take a while. It can also be challenging to get it rest into the charging cradle correctly. And the middle joystick falls off occasionally. I'm pretty sure that it's no longer made. When it dies, I'm looking forward to one of the Harmony models such as the 900!
Media Center UI
XBMC Eden
Aeon Nox v3.62
Cinema Experience
Scraping
I use Ember Media Manager to scrape all artwork and some trailers, etc. This way I'm not relying on AD or 3rd party site as much to always be available or work properly. Because many movies have the trailer on the DVD I extract them to use as high quality trailers from VOB's and then convert to mp4. I keep "VOB" in the name so I know it was created from the original. Many of my movies are OffLine, so I use the the EMM OffLine manager a lot.
I use a custom vbs script to create daily dated backups of XBMC as well as all artwork and trailers from Media Library. So the actual movie files (mp4, mkv, iso, etc) are ignored.