Part II Now Showing in Your Living Room Wall-size screens, outrageous gadgets, and a sound system that will frighten small children. How do you know you have a great theater setup? When the bass shakes the fillings out of your teeth, the picture's so real it gives you goose bumps the size of beach balls, and angry neighbors are lining up outside with torches and pitchforks. OK, so maybe you should crank it down a notch. But with a setup this good it's hard to pry yourself away. Systems these days are not only loud, big, and bright, they no longer take an engineering degree to set up. Intelligent devices like digital VCRs will automatically record all your favorite TV shows, while audio-video servers will broadcast your favorite CDs, MP3 songs, or DVD movies to any room in the house. Sounds like sci-fi, but it's all possible today. In this second installment of our 21st-Century Home series, we show you how to turn your living room into an electronic amusement palace. Section I: Play Time The ReplayTV is essentially a huge hard drive and a processor that connects to your television set. The sleek black device looks like a standard VCR, except it doesn't use videotapes. Instead, the ReplayTV digitizes your shows into the MPEG2 format (similar to DVD movies) and stores them on a giant 27GB hard disk, which holds up to 28 hours of video. One advantage to this digital approach is you can pause and rewind live TV broadcasts.
If you've got a TV tuner in your PC, MGI Software's Pure Diva is an intriguing alternative. Using your PC hard disk and the TV tuner, Pure Diva works similarly to stand-alone digital VCRs like the ReplayTV. You can pause, rewind, and even zoom into live broadcasts. Pure Diva will be available only when you buy a high-end PC. (At press time, MGI would not comment on which companies will offer it.) You've got only one DVD player but want to watch movies in several
rooms. Sounds like a movie buff's fantasy. But it's real—and it won't cost you a fortune or make you break your back laying coaxial cable throughout your house. The Leapfrog HomeNetwork sends video from any standard source (DVD player, VCR, cable box) to a distant TV set—through your home's telephone wires. A basic two-TV package runs $179, with each extra receiver costing $99. It's as simple as it sounds. Just plug your DVD player's A/V cables into the HomeNetwork's compact transmitter box, and connect the box to any phone jack. Do the same with the phone jack and TV in your bedroom, dim the lights, and pass the popcorn. You won't have to sprint into the other room every time you want to pause the movie; the Leapfrog will even transmit your remote-control commands through the phone wires.
The only drawback to both Leapfrog and DVD Anywhere is you hear only standard stereo and lose the six-channel Dolby Digital sound that DVD provides. Even so, it beats carrying a DVD player from room to room. For all the time spent in front of your TV, you expect more than the
same old boring programs.
Sega's new Dreamcast ($199) makes your TV even harder to walk away from by combining a Web set-top box with a 128-bit video game console. The Dreamcast's 56Kbps modem dials into the Dreamcast Network (using your own ISP or through AT&T, which starts at $9.95 a month), which offers Web surfing, e-mail, chat, and bulletin boards. Trade saved game files with other Dreamcast users and download new elements to some games (such as new characters for Sonic Adventure). Sega will gradually roll out head-to-head and multiplayer versions of Dreamcast video games so you can challenge other players online. Look for Sony and Nintendo to offer Web-enabled consoles soon as well. You've got more remote controls than you do fingers, and it's driving
you nuts. There has to be an easier way. If you already own a 3Com Palm handheld, there's a cheaper way to stop the remote-control madness. Pacific Neo-Tek OmniRemote software ($20) turns your Palm into a clicker for your TV set, VCR, or any device that understands infrared signals. Just draw a button on the Palm's screen with your stylus, give it a label (like "on"), and teach it a signal with the original remote. Easy pull-down menus let you switch from TV to VCR control. OmniRemote works with any infrared-equipped Palm model (except the Palm V).
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But the coolest thing
about the ReplayTV is that it lets you customize your TV experience. For example, tell the
ReplayTV you want to tape The Chris Rock Show, and it'll automatically record it
every week, even if the show airs at different times. Even better, tell the ReplayTV
you're a big golfer and the device will automatically record any golf- related shows that
play throughout the day. Its current price ($1,499) is a bit high, but look for prices to
drop in the coming months. Meanwhile, the Philips Personal TV with TiVo ($499 or $999,
depending on storage capacity) offers many of the same features as the ReplayTV, but you
pay a $9.95 monthly service charge. 
If you're already using all your phone jacks for something else,
say to network all your PCs, consider X-10's DVD Anywhere ($250). DVD Anywhere uses radio
waves instead of phone wires to distribute video throughout your house. DVD Anywhere works
with both TV- and PC-based DVD players (as long as they've got video-out ports). DVD
Anywhere includes a special clicker that'll issue control commands (Pause, Rewind, and so
on) to a remote PC by radio waves. 
In the meantime, WebTV Plus set-tops from companies
like Mitsubishi, Philips, and Sony do an impressive job of integrating live TV programming
with the Web. These $200 boxes dial up the Web and let you surf on your TV. A Picture-in
Picture feature lets you watch X-Files in a small window while you look up info
from the show's Web site on the rest of the screen. Or browse an electronic program guide
while previewing what's on each channel in the small window. During commercials, you can
kick back on the couch with the wireless keyboard and fire off e-mails from one of the six
included e-mail accounts.