South Shore - City Life TV Stand for Flat-Panel TVs up to 50" - Black

Upon arrival I opened the box and noticed big chips taken out of the top shelf in the from which couldn't be covered by the paint stick included and was unable to put it back in the box to return it because the only way to open it is to tear it up. There was also chips in other parts of the stand. Other than that the stand is a great value. Plenty of storage and set up nicely to put receivers, consoles, etc. in and have plenty of ventilation.

We bought this for our son's first apartment. This is a great, sturdy piece. My two sons had no problem setting it up, they had it put together in less then an hour. This is a great entertainment center for the money. We are VERY HAPPY with our purchase!

looks very cool and modern easy to setup but hold only 55 inch

While it appears South Shore went to great lenghts to protect these, it is not nearly good enough considering the weight and I ended up with damage on the bottom and middle main shelves. I am trying to get new parts from the maker, will update on how that works out but I built it anyway. There are 233 reviews on a main online retailers site and nearly all of them mention various degrees of damage on arrival. Hopefully your experience will be different. Make of the damage will be chips in the black laminant and they provide a black marker to cover these up, that worked out pretty well, except for the dent. On to the stand and please take any further comments on looks as if it was not damaged in shipping. The stand arrives in a 110 pound box, so either plan to unpack it and bring the pieces in indivudually or have two people. I did this myself and have a reasonable amount of experience assembling and I would rate this as a 2 on a 1 to 10 scale of complexity, 10 being complex, other than hanging the doors, this is about as easy as they get, however because of the weight I would rate difficulty as a 5. The instructions are pretty good and has an inventory page to make sure you have everything. You will note it says you need a Robinson screw driver, this is not the case, the included hex driver works just fine. Assembly including unpacking and inventory was a little over an hour but if you do not do this a lot, plan on 2-3 hours. Take your time, until it is assembled it is fragile. Nothing tricky about the assembly and the only time you should need the hammer it putting the feet and back on. Tap light with the feet. If you use the back make sure all 4 corners are the same between the back and the stand, this ensures that it is square, putting all of the shelves will help square it also. The center shelf is a tight fit.. I made two mods. the first was before assembly, the 3 adjustable shelves only have 3 spots, 1" apart, and one of them was too low for one of my components, so I used a piece of carboard to make a spacing jig using the existing 3 holes as a guide and I added one hole above and below the set of three it comes with. This is needed if you have anything over 7 1/2" tall you want on or under a shelf. If you do this TAKE GREAT CARE if you make this mod, here are some tips: 1. On the two center boards the shelf peg hole go all the way through the board so it can support and inner and outer shelf. Make sure to use heavy tape (masking, painter, duct) on the opposite side you are drilling and make sure it is on something hard, like a block of wood, if you do not do this the black laminant will peel where the drill bit comes out. 2. On the 2 outer board the holes do not go all the way though, if you do not have a plung stop for your drill, use masking tape in the drill bit to mark the depth, do not push hard, particle board drills like butter. The other mod is not using the back cover, while it has three holes behind each cabinet area, it is impossible to get to the back of your gear, so all your cables will have to be long enough to fully pull something out you need to get to. The other issue with the back panel is you really only get 16 3/4" of depth with the back on you have to count the space needed for the plugs, so you end up with about 16" of depth for the components, without the back your gear and cable connections can stick out leaving more like 17" to work with, which was just right for my receiver. To square it up you can use a T-Square and if you do not have one, then measure diagonally corner to corner (Top left to Bottom Right, and then Bottom Left to Top Right), when the two measurements are exactly the same (< 1/16") then it is square. If you use the back it squares it if you follow the instructions and get the corners right first. The problem without the back is the unit gets lateral stability from this backer board, the fix is the add L-braces to the 4 outer corners, and 4 T-braces on the center "box", all on the back. You can get these from any Home Depot, Also get either 5/8" or 3/4" inch particle board screws (course thread). Make sure to pre-drill the holes for the screws, particle board can easily chip/break if not pre-drilled. After the brackets it is solid as a rock, well a particle board rock anyway. The feet are plastic and I have this on hardwood floors so I put the feet on funiture sliders for hardwood floors, this makes it real easy to slid around when you need to move it and no floor scratches or legs breaking. The feet are 2" Dia. and there are 6 of them. This is 105 pounds built and I added 97 pounds of Home Theater and TV, so as it sits it is 202 pounds, even on carpet I would put sliders on, they make them for carpet also and they are cheap. The legs will likely pop off sliding it loaded up on carpet. The Final assembly job is haning the doors and it is the nature of the beast that this is a pain, but worth the time getting it right, once set it is good for the life of the stand. If you are going to put the back on, make sure to do that before adjusting the doors, it will likely change shape a little when squared up. The stand really looks exceptional once finished, modern without being overwhelming and the frosted glass takes the tech edge off of your home theater gear. So far all IR remotes work on everything behinds the frosted glass and my Harmony One IR remote also works fine. With the back off everything is a breeze to get to, allowing for great cable management and ventalation, with the front doors on game consoles and Amps/Receivers are likely likely to get too hot. I opted to use the open middle area for my Blu-Ray, which I access the most, and my receiver was too wide for the sides so it went in the lower middle spot, worked out pretty nice, with the cable box, Ethernet switch (feeds Blu-Ray and TV), Monster Power manager, DVD Carasal, and DVD-Recorder/DVR behind the doors. Sans the damage, this looks really great and is highly functional.

I highly recommend this tv stand. My 60" panasonic plasma looks super on it. Don't worry about the 50" stipulation - instead go by the weight of your own tv.