How to Hide Receiver/DVD Lights From View? (1 Viewer)

Can you please tell me some methods of hiding the front panel lights, so they are not a distraction from the TV screen? (And still be able to control the receiver and DVD player with the remote.)
Thank you for any suggestions/ideas.

There is a very simple solution.
You just need infra-red repeaters.
An infra red receiver will sit atop your cabinet in view and then send the IR signals to your equipment behind closded doors via small cables and repeaters.
Just go to Smarthome.com
There are more expensive brands but this will get the job done cheaply.
Good luck.

Black cloth works well. I made a matte for my TV out of foam-core cardboard, and attach some soft black cloth (fleece maybe) to hang in front of the electronics. The remotes work fine despite the cloth. And the cost was undoubtedly far less than an IR repeater
If appearance was important, you could make a custom faceplate, with holes cut to expose only the IR receivers in the electronics.

Black Electrical Tape!

Most equipment already has a built in dimmer that dims or turns of the display.If you leave your equipment on all the time then you only have to dim or shut the displays off once.Otherwise you have to re-do it each time you power up.

There is a problem with enclosing your system behind doors in a cabinet - HEAT! This will shorten the life of your equipment. Robert's suggestion of using the "dim" function is very good. You might also think about moving the electronics to the side of the room, where the panel lights are less objectionable.
Marty

You must be watching movies in the dark for equipment lights to bother you. If your equipment does not have night mode, dim your main lights, but make sure you have some light on the sides of the room.
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Bruce
http://bruceabar.tripod.com/theabarshometheater/

I never really thought much about all the ambient light from components until I installed FPTV into my home recently.
Many components have non-defeatable lighting, and as such they need to be blocked somehow.
For example, in my system:
The amplifier, DAC, DVD player and Processor all have nondefeatable lights.
The amplifier has channel indicator lights, the DAC lights up like a christmas tree. The DVD player display can be dimmed so that the LCD panel is blank, but several lights still remain, the Processor front panel can only be dimmed, not shut off.
To avoid the distractions it will be necessary for me to do something about this, I'll probably do something with black curtains and IR repeaters to address this shortcoming. I have too much equipment coming and going to do something more elaborate than this.
After that, it's going to be an interesting game of "hide the wires".
For those with FP setups, it is a serious consideration.
Regards,
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John Kotches
Contributing Writer
Link Removed

I used a permenant black magic marker on the LEDs. This dimmed all but one LED so they are still visible in the dark, but not distracting at all.
The one LED that was still too bright? My receiver is a Sony DB-930. I keep the display set to off. It will illuminate while using the remote, but turns back off after a few seconds (GREAT FEATURE!!). It has an extremely bright blue horizontal LED that lights up to indicate a DD or DTS signal. It looked really cool at first, but was anoying after my first movie. I took the top and front panel of the receiver off and used the same marker to cover the white matte plastic that ran between the outter clear plastic and the blue LED inside (ONLY USE THE MARKER ON ONE SIDE OF THE PLASTIC PIECE THOUGH-the blue light will not be able to be seen at all if you color both sides). This dimmed the blue indicator to the same brightness level as the rest of the LEDs.
I also leave my Dony DVD player's display set to off. It doesn't have the same feature of display auto on-off as my receiver. No big deal though. I just use the on (TV) screen display instead of looking down.
I agree - enclosing your receiver can cause exess heat. The cloth idea is also good, but can get in the way of the CD/DVD drawer.
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Another solution is window tinting film. It is available in various tints and will still leave the display visible. I read about this on this forum(I believe) several years ago. I am getting ready to try it myself.

You guys have offered up just about every solution, I guess? That's proof of how well the forum works for those who need HT information.
Mr. Duh here, didn't realize until I read this thread that I could dim my receiver and DVD. Thanks for the enlightenment!
WRITTEN BY ERIC'S CONFESSOR