One way to make your RV feel and sound like home is to upgrade your audio and video components
And if you enjoy watching movies and listening to music like we do, you might also want to
install an inexpensive sound system
Well we're going to show you the upgrades we've made to our RV's audio and video components
Maybe it will just give some ideas for your own DIY project
Hey today i wanted to show you some upgrades we've done inside of our RV
We've owned this for about 8 years now and, you guys know, the technology today especially
with TVs and audio systems have really come down in price and advanced quite a bit, at
least since we bought this RV.
We still had a tube TV.
We've done some upgrades as you could imagine over the years
I'm going to start back here in the bedroom and show you what we've done back here
When we first got the RV, there was a 13 inch tube TV mounted in this cabinet
So...nice for watching TV back here in the bedroom
But eventually it really got hard to see, and obviously, it's a tube TV.
After a few years, who still had a tube TV.
Well we did.
So I wanted to swap this out with a nice LED or LCD screen and I did this a few years ago
And I liked the fact that it was in this cabinet here
I wanted to find something that I could still keep inside the cabinet but provide a nicer
display, and HD quality display so we could watch movies in bed
I realized that this cabinet here on the side had a panel
If I removed the panel I could get to the back of the TV and remove it
What I found is that there is quite a bit of space here once I got the tube TV out
So there was a piece of paneling that kind of covered this whole area to hide the tube
TV
So I removed that and there was this big open space back here
I went out and got a flat screen TV that would fit
I ended up going with a 22 inch, I got as big as I could get
It kind of fills the hole pretty well
So the key to this is basically mounting the TV so that I could view it nicely from bed
which meant I needed to angle it down a little bit
So I layed in bed and went through a few adjustments to get it just right
I took some 2x2s and screwed them into the cabinet here and made this bracket
I don't know if you can see it back there.
But I got a standard mounting bracket and mounted it to a piece of wood at the top here
and mounted the TV to it so it's nice and secure
Ok.
So let's talk about audio.
Once I got this new TV in here.
The video quality looked really nice.
You could see it nicely from the bed.
But in order to watch movies back here it has these two little speakers in front.
You really had to jack the volume all the way up to hear it.
Then you could hear it everywhere.
So wanted to come up with another solution that allowed us to kinda have really good
audio quality while we were laying in bed
I was able to run some speaker wire all the way from the TV and I wanted it to be hidden
so I ran it all the way through the wall and under the coach and up to the other side here
I was able to locate the wires that went to those speakers above the bed and wire them
to this little amp
I needed some kind of amplifier because there was no amplification coming out of the TV
speakers
So I found this little amplifier for under 20 bucks on Amazon and it was enough to do
the trick.
To give me enough power and wired these speaker outputs here to go now to those speakers up
there
So.
When I want to watch a movie I simply switch this on and now I get some awesome audio from
my movie right above our head in the bed
Ok.
We'll that's a quick look at what we did back here in the bedroom.
Now let's head up front and I'll show you kind of our make shift home theater setup
in the front
Ok now in the front of the RV, we have this nice little TV cabinet that came with the
RV.
It originally had a Jensen 12 volt DC powered TV that sat in there
And it has this nice little electronic swing arm on it that kind of swings the TV in and
out.
We decided not to upgrade to another 12 volt TV.
I just didn't want to spend the money, plus now that I have an inverter I don't really
need a DC powered TV.
I can just run an AC powered TV for less money on the inverter.
I found a TV that maximized the size to get the biggest size for this spot
I found Vizio 32 inch TV that I could mount outside this cabinet
It was kind of a challenge because I had to find a way to mount it to the existing motorized
arm, but the arm was actually designed for the TV to be inset within the cabinet
So here's what I did
I had to find a way to extend the mounting so I could push the TV out about 4 to 5 inches
so it would be outside the cabinet
This is an "L" shaped thing here so it is designed to have the TV sit within the frame
So I found this little extender, this little mount extension on Amazon for about 19 dollars
And it's adjustable.
It adjusts in different directions, up, down and swivels back and forth.
So it worked out perfectly.
I got it adjusted by drilling an extra hole to line it up just right
As I close it, it puts just enough pressure on the TV so it keeps it really nice and snug
I put these little rubber stopper things on strategic places so that when it snugs up
against the cabinet wall here it's nice and snug and it doesn't move around or vibrate
while I'm going down the road.
That has worked really well.
There's one there, one up at the top and a couple on the other side as well.
The surround sound system sounds really awesome in here
It comes with a sub woofer and 5 surround sound speakers so it's basically just running
speaker wire through the cabinets to get them to the right place.
Under the TV there is where the center channel is
Right and left channel located up here And the sub woofer I ended up putting under
my couch Here's the left rear speaker in the kitchen
area and on the other side here is the right rear speaker
You can't really see any wires because they are all kind of tucked away inside the cupboards.
You may need to drill a couple holes
But, the bottom line is that it sounds awesome, whether you're watching a movie or whether
you're just listening to music.
Sounds great
Ready to watch a movie.
I'm ready.
What are we watching.
Well, Top Gun Again?
I like Top Gun!
Do you want to be Maverick or Goose?
Maverick of course.
Goose doesn't make it.
But, alright.
Alright MAV Alright Goose!
Laughing...Isn't this how all couples watch movies?
So what movie are we watching?
We're going to watch Top Gun.
Ok.
You want to be Maverick or Goose?
I don't want to be sitting like this.
Alright.
Do some of that flying Shit Mav!
We're enjoying a movie.