In order to keep equipment out-of-sight, I cut a hole in the crawl-space area under the media room. This offers easy access to the equipment, and keeps the associated wiring completely hidden (and there are LOTS of wires to hide). Ignore the ugly wire coming out of the window - it was only temporary. The large access panel next to the equipment rack allows me to crawl over to the furnace which is installed in the crawl space, or run more wires, if necessary. Obviously, the hand-railing poses a bit of an obstacle, but this was unavoidable due to the load-bearing supports which I could not work around, forcing the window to be in this somewhat compromised position.

An awesome bonus, when we are watching more than one movie (such as an LOTR marathon), I can place one DVD case between each of the railing spindles above the rack. It is very convenient!