TV electronic components are not the most beautiful thing in your home, no matter how high quality or how much you paid for them.
If possible, do your best to get the smallest electronics available and/or hide them in some way so they do not become an eye sore in your home.
Here are a few ways to hide a cable or satellite receiver box as well as other TV components.
photo courtesy of Sara Ackerman flickr.com/photos/sackerman519/8524665759/
Don't Mess Up Your Electronics
Many of your electronic devices require proper ventilation to prevent overheating, access for remote control signals, and easy access for maintenance or troubleshooting.
Make sure that whatever method you use to hide your electronics doesn't mess them up.
Entertainment Center
The easiest way to hide your TV electronics is to put them inside an entertainment center behind doors.
Simply open the doors to watch TV and close the doors when you are done.
Your satellite or cable receiver box as well as the TV will be hidden, as long as you remember to close the doors.
If you don't want a huge entertainment center in your room, you can use a smaller media cabinet below a TV sitting on top of the cabinet or wall mounted above. Just make sure that your cabinet is the exact same size or wider than your TV else the scale will look akward.
Secret Panel
If you have some extra space behind your TV or in a nearby wall, install a secret panel to put your TV components.
Glass or Fabric Front Cabinets
You can put your TV components inside a cabinet with glass or fabric covered doors.
Traditional infrared remotes need to be able to shine the light from the remote toward the satellite or cable box to make the receiver box operate.
Luckily they will shine through most glass and fabric.
Using tinted glass hides the TV components a little better than clear glass.
Radio Frequency Remote
Instead of using a traditional infrared remote, you can use a radio frequency remote instead to help hide TV components.
Infrared (IR) remotes require the remote to "see" the box, however radio frequency (RF) remotes do not.
Radio frequency remote controllers work similar to a garage door opener, allowing you to hide your TV components in a completely enclosed cabinet, in a closet, or in another room.
Many newer remotes already have the radio frequency feature built in - you just need to change the settings on your satellite or cable receiver.
You can research online your particular receiver model or particular model remote to see if they are able to be switched to radio frequency.
Wireless Receiver
Many cable and satellite companies now have wireless receivers.
Wireless receivers allow you to stash your receiver almost anywhere out of sight.
Contact your cable or satellite company to see if you can upgrade your receivers to this new technology.
