Home Theatre from Hell

The problems I’m having so far…

• Only my front L&R speakers work. I know why, but I don’t have the resources to fix it.
• The projection area is larger than my screen area, even completely zoomed out. The only possible solution I see is removing our large mirror from above the fireplace each time we use the projector.
• My TV tuner card needs to connect thru a PCI-e slot in my motherboard, but all of them are full. And even if I had a spare, it was built to run on Vista and I back-tracked this computer to XP.. and finding an XP driver is harder than you’d think.
• There are cables. Everywhere. I was going to attempt cleaning up the cable mess but I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. There are even two cables running a two-foot section between the fireplace and the rug, which proves to be a hazard. However, these cables lead to the rear L&R speakers which aren’t even connected, so I am tempted to just remove them completely.
• I am forced (for some reason) to run the Xbox360 out with RCA component instead of the better-quality RGB component since.. well, I found a converter but now I need three male-to-male adapters. The quality is quite bad using RCA. I’m wondering if doing it this other way would even create better picture quality. Think, think, think..
• Did I mention there’s cables everywhere?
• The projector is lower to the ground due to ceiling (and ceiling fan shadow) restraints, and that means if anyone stands up or walks casually in the room, their shadow will disrupt the stream. That also means that if you look at the wall from a certain angle, you can fry your eyes. Perfect.
• My “component switcher” is not working correctly, and even if it was, I wouldn’t be able to hook up everything to it apparently.

This would be so much easier if we had a standard digital TV, standard digital cable box, standard digital receiver, and standard speakers running speaker wire.. instead of the projector, regular coax, a “component switcher,” and 5.1 speakers running 1/4” cables all around. Oh, and if we were still in the process of building our house and RAN ALL THE CABLES WITHIN THE WALLS. [/ideal world] [/whining]

Okay, enough of that. Back to work…