When we saw a press release from Salamander Designs announcing new A/V cabinet configurations, we yawned and moved to click to another page. Our click was stopped through when we read an interesting line about the company’s Extended Rear Panel with Active Cooling Kit. That looked pretty cool to us given the hot rat’s nest behind our A/V cabinet in the next room.

The Salamander Designs Extended Rear Panel with Active Cooling Kit is designed (without the Active Cooling Kit) to provide more depth and ventilation than standard rear panels and can reportedly be removed quicker. What the Active Cooling Kit adds to this configuration is a remote thermostat and dual fans which offer self-described “precision cooling.”

This workstation is more then a little disconcerting when you first see it. We are so used to minimalist design, it’s nice to see something fully loaded. As you can see it’s like they crammed an entire living space inside. It’s designed by designer Peter J. Sucy and it has tons of functionality. So much so that it requires an arch to enter.

Your first destination, the seat, which is fully adjustable. From there you’ll work away with fully adjustable monitors, a keyboard and a mouse. Plenty of storage here too, all easily accessible. Better still, look at all the room it has for your toys and gadgets. The kid in me wants to live in one like a fort. But alas, it remains a concept. Keep your fingers crossed.

If you are a really big fan of Capcom games and want to feel the rumble of getting your butt kicked in Street Fighter and the like, the new Capcom-branded Reactor Video Game Chair from Ultimate Game Chair is for you. It will price around $180.

The Capcom Reactor Video Game Chair sports “eight high-impact vibrating motors and 3D-stereo sound.” The motors are located in the upper and lower back, as well as the seat cushion, offering a massage mode as well.

Here’s a cool high tech furniture concept idea which works well if you like the extreme minimalist look in your urban crash pad. It is called, simply enough, the Digitable.

The Digitable, as envisioned by designer Peter Lea, looks simply at first like a contemporary glass coffee table. Closer inspection shows though the center circular part opens up to reveal itself as a CD/DVD player. The underside as well also plays into the geek factor, serving as a disc storage carousel.

The XYZ Computer Desk has an awesome sleek design and gives the Sync some competition. It’s beautiful and at the same time easily upgradeable. The best part of course, is that you have the full computer right there, but it’s taking up no extra room.

All of the components and cables are inside the desk. Whenever you need to upgrade, just open the lid. The CDRW/DVD, USB and Hot Keys are on the side. It’s just a concept at the moment, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it go into production. It certainly makes life easier and saves space. Plus, it’s just plain pleasant to look at.

At some point in time it becomes necessary to move beyond the milk cartons and cardboard boxes you house your A/V gear in. One relatively new A/V cabinet we are eying is the AVSC-2061E from Bell’O, pricing at around $700.

Bell’o’s AVSC-2061E does up a nice combo of wood, glass and metal. It can hold a flat panel up to 65-inches in diameter as well as at least six audio video components and a center channel speaker. The middle shelf is adjustable as well.

If the wife is screaming because your media center PC has cables running everywhere around your home theater room, you need a remedy to restore marital bliss. One possible solution might be the MediaCore and its furniture cabinet looks.

The MediaCore is a wooden enclosure which looks like a stylish European type cabinet. It is essentially a full fledged computer which is built into this thing, as you can see from the picture above. It has a forced air flow design to keep things cool and can host other A/V equipment like cable boxes to keep clutter down.

In our ongoing attempt to decorate Wayne Manor entirely, I present to you the latest in Bat chairs. The Half Moon chair by designer Louis Saul was recently unveiled at the imm Cologne 2008. It’s designed as a wing chair with built-in skeleton-like bright orange seat cushioning. It’s a must for those nights when you’ve just thrown the Joker in Arkham asylum once again and you just need some rest.

Just sit back and relax…Until You get that call…Or until you see this signal in the sky…Then you can forget relaxing while watching a movie in this… Such is the life of a brooding and rich super hero.

We’ve seen a number of products featuring not just Han Solo but Han Solo frozen in carbonite, including this idea for a ‘fridge and we’ve even seen some pictures floating around of Han in carbonite built out of legos. Well now you can steal Vader’s prize to Boba Fett and have the frozen Han Solo for yourself and turned into a practical piece of furniture. This desk is actually real and was created by Tom Spina Designs for a client with an apparent love for Star Wars and some extra cash lying around.

via bbGadgets

This dinette could probably make you feel a bit dizzy if you looked at it too long. If furniture has personalities I would have to say that these could be classified as either “vertically challenged” or “objects on crack”. They’re equal parts creepy and cool. Designer Benjamin Hopf wanted to freeze them in time as they are falling apart before your eyes. But in contrast, they’re just as sturdy as most other chairs.

There’s no price listed for these on the site, but being art, I’m sure it’s inflated. It would be great to buy a bunch of this stuff and redo someone’s room while they’re away. They might be convinced that they have entered another dimension. One not of sight or sound, but one of mind…

It’s a simple enough story. First we see the human lying back, perfectly relaxed in their Armchair Paradise pod, looking quite content. Next, we see that the pod has slammed it’s jaws shut, trapping the human inside, leaving the legs exposed. It will take approximately 2.5 hours to fully digest the human mass. Midway through digestion, the legs will fall away from the structure, having not been consumed. Every pod knows that human legs are the worst part. Too stringy.

How do they lure humans inside? Total comfort of course, after a hard day’s work, plus a built-in sound system that envelopes you in sound. THAT is how they get us!

$31,500 can buy you a lot of home furniture from Ikea. You could also sink that money into one piece which will help you live out your home theater, fire blazing in the night fantasies. Meet the Vok Multimedia Fireplace.

This premium piece of wood is available in oak, birch or rosewood and comes in four sizes. You can of course guess why - for the different television sizes in the world. The largest piece will hold a LCD TV up to 52-inches.

Ace Bayou, a developer of self described sound furniture, is coming out with a new recliner which will cut the cords, so to speak, when connecting to an audio device. It is called the Ace Bayou Wireless Audio Recliner. No specific word on pricing or availability.

The Ace Bayou Wireless Audio Recliner makes use of space inside the chair to “amplify sound, increase sound quality and improve the user experience.” It has a built-in 2.1 sound system with two forward-facing speakers and subwoofer.

German designer Max Blank has a 21st century heating appliance that also serves as the center of your living room. This is the company’s Berlin model wood-burnings fireplace, a stand-alone unit that can sit anywhere you like in your dwelling. The gray finish with glass base compliments the Panasonic line of televisions so they have that going for owners of Panasonic home theater equipment.

There’s room for four shelves for you to display your knick knacks. Emissions and smoke are carried up the center pipe so all you’re limited to is where your chimney is located in the room. But the really stand-out feature of the Berlin fireplace is that the glass base can swivel a full 360-degrees allowing you the opportunity to face the fire no matter where you are in the room. Don’t move toward the fire, this time the fire can move to face you. Now where’s our swiveling bathtub?

Why go to a rave when you can have one from the comfort of your very own massage chair? That’s the idea at least behind The Rave, a new “synchronized” massage/music chair available for around $900.

The Rave, designed by Raffel Comfort Sciences, gives you four pre-programmed massage treatments which run for 15 minutes. All can be adjusted for intensity and such. This massage chair also serves as an iPod accessory with two full-range speakers mounted in the back. The Rave helps your massage get down when your iPod or other connected audio device is playing by synching your restful vibrations to the bass notes.