I was hoping to toe-out the ledge that the TV and speakers would sit on, so that they could be as far forward in the cabinet as possible. I'm going the pedestal-route on the TV to offer flexibility in TV trims if I ever need to replace the plasma. That, and I kind of like the pedestal.
The diagram below is of the smaller 50" TV model, but I would think that the 58" pedestal wouldn't be drastically different in dimensions. Worst case, the screen is about 6" from the front of the cabinet.
Also, I piddled around with to-scale cabinet designs (using MS Word of all programs).
Mostly, I wanted to see how the components scaled out on the 12ft wall and against each other. Neither the wife or myself or particularly happy with how it looks, so I think I'd rather give the carpenter some rules to follow, and see what he comes up with. And yes, that's the sub on the bottom-center <shudder>. Still working on fixing that.
I was thinking something along the lines of the following:
* M60s near the outside corners, to come
close to Dolby's 5.1 layout recommendations
* Keep it symmetric, if at all possible
As far as cutouts for speakers, I'm curious about optimal deadspace on each side (if I couldn't follow tom's slide-out design). Is it better to leave alot of space, or a little? Preferably, I'd like to just leave it wide open at the TV-Speaker level from wall-to-wall. In my head, that would eliminate alot of the cabinet-effects. But then I need to put the electronic components somewhere.
