Help me ID this spider?

After the imminent family freakout I managed to capture this beast. I am curious what species it is. It's more than 6cm long which is the second largest I've ever seen 'in the wild' (not in a terrarium). The largest which was about 10cm I met in a toilet while on holidays in '11 and I've only got a very hazy (night time with cell phone) photo of it. 

It was under the TV shelf if that helps. Maybe it's connected to media.

Eight-legged friend

If you middle-click on the pics, they open full-scale on a new tab, at least in Opera (in other browsers, right-click and choose the 'open in new tab' option and pray it's working, stupid Blogger). The pics are all super macro shots taken from a maximum distance of one inch with a resolution of 3400x2000, so they bring out detail very well.

This picture is almost professional, with a natural background (backyard with strawberries). The spider itself is about 3-4cms long with its legs stretched. 

Here's a welcome to Scott Lesch, thanks for following!

Click on 'Read more' to see the rest of the post.

New pet

After the last cleanup, I had to give way to my domesticated spider. Now it seems I have a new one, and at a cleanup-proof place: outside my window.