Exactly why I went with an entertainment cabinet. Hide it all! Too many cords to wrangle effectively. I have actually pared down my game consoles so there are less cords to wrangle now. I guess that’s one form of cable management.
Since the iMac was replaced, I have a Mac mini and a mini pc sitting on the table with wires snaking everywhere. I would love to see some on desk cable management solutions.
Our family room solution is probably too specific to the setup of our home to be generally helpful to everyone, but maybe it will help someone. My wife has a strong aversion to wires, so we got a Samsung Frame TV for the wall in the family room. A hall closet was conveniently located right around the corner from that wall, and the Frame TV sends power, ethernet, and HDMI through a single cable. That cable runs through the wall to the closet, where the Apple TV, TiVO mini, and Frame TV box sit. I did have to make sure I had the newer versions of the TiVO and Apple TV, so we’d have RF remotes (so I didn’t need line of sight to control anything).
The drawback is audio. We use the TV’s audio, which is fine, but not great. We have another spot where we watch movies if we want good audio. If I could convince my wife that the HomePods should go near the TV, it would be better, but that’s a pipe dream.
So I’ve a follow up. We are having our carpenter make a new surround for our fireplace and a new mantle - he’s going to build in a channel for my cables behind the woodwork! I just need to get longer hdmi and power cables to put the Apple TV and cable box down by the floor vs on mantle. It’ll look great.
And you’ll always know when your cables expire.
The other tip, if you have the resources to do so and the space is more permanent, is not to “manage” cables you could shorten.
No point with a huge wad of cat5 if you can swap it for a shorter cable, for example.
I used to work at a company where we had a huge ethernet cable (like 100 feet long or something) that we could use for any setup we needed to test, then we’d actually get a roughly-proper-length cable for the more permanent installation.