M21 Flat Panel puts modern HDTV inside mid-century modern console
Joe Wilkerson's "M21 Flat Panel" is just a prototype design, although the furniture maker would probably be all-too-willing to make a custom cabinet for your plasma or LCD flat panel if you were willing to pay the price. It's a lovely look and one not too difficult to replicate for the home woodworker. Or so I hope: I'm going to be moving into a new place in a couple of weeks and am wanting to try to build a false wall for all my electronics and such in my new bedroom. Now I'm thinking how slick it'd be to do the whole thing with this sort of mid-century modern gilled speaker grill touches. (More on my new room soon; I need to run over there and take pictures and precise measurements before I draft up plans. I'd love to trawl your minds for good ideas.)
Product Page [WilkersonFurniture.com via Gizmodo via Unplggd]
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Well, I was gonna direct you to http://www.tubesandmore.com/ for some nice vintage grillcloth, but their site appears to be b0rked. They do produce a handy dead-tree catalog, though. My advice would be to modify an existing piece of furniture. It's probably not too difficult to find old radio/television furniture, coz it takes up a hell of a lot of space and folks usually just want to be rid of it. My dad has acquired many console radios this way...
ZOMG. Perfect for my recreation of the house in The Incredibles.
This would actually be a pretty easy project using off-the-shelf molding readily available. Picture framing molding would be a good way to go. Here's a quick example:
http://www.framing4yourself.com/picture-frames/unfinished-moldings.htm
The only technical challenge that comes to mind is that you're likely to cover the IR receiver–not sure how to overcome that easily...
I drew something like this for a client a couple years ago. It was a little more sixties with a curve to the sides -a bulging rectangle shape. The curves were a pain to get right, but the final result turned out really nice. As W000T pointed out, we needed a hole for the remote, but we were able to blend it in pretty well among some fake knobs. The biggest problem is that the size of modern TVs makes them look out of proportion.
Another cool idea that I came across while researching the design was an authentic Predicta TV. They're modern TVs with custom vintage style. Not flat panel, but updated for cable, DVD hookups, etc.
http://www.predicta.com/index.shtml