Picking out a media console

Photo courtesy of Design*Sponge

How long did it take you to pick out a media console? It should be easy, right? Not so much.

We're currently making a couple of changes to a few rooms in our house, including the bonus and living room. Currently, the bonus room is where we spend most of our time. We turned it into a kind of tv/entertainment room, however, the room isn't what I would call pretty. We have a cheap media table, a broken leather couch and a few baskets holding all of our video games and movies. What's worse is that I bought all of the "nice" furniture for the living room - the room that we never spend time in. Does that make sense? I'm finally doing something about it by moving the tv upstairs and turning the bonus room into an office with a sitting area. We've already purchased a wall mount from Monoprice (if you don't know about Monoprice, check it out!), but we are lacking something to hold our dvd player, cable box and all of the game consoles that we own.

I didn't think it would be that hard, but we looked and looked and looked today, and didn't come home with anything...not even a candle or a vase. It was frustrating and eye-opening to say the least. I didn't realize you had to take so many things into consideration when choosing a media console. Where will the cords go? Will you be able to use the controller if the doors are closed? It's all very complicated and to top it off, we have a pretty small budget for this - under $500.

Here are a few I like: