OTHER TECH

The Denon AVR-5800 receiver that runs the system has remarkable switching abilities - everything goes through it. The Denon not only drives the main theater room but also feeds signals to an old McIntosh receiver I use to power the speakers in the other rooms. The Denon even feeds music to the Elan phone system when a caller is on hold.

Taking Control Speaking of the phones - with the Elan system, when I pick up any phone and hit # P, the music throughout the house mutes, and my voice is broadcast over all the speakers. This saves me from having to yell from my second-floor office down to my wife in the bedroom. Since I'm almost always listening to music, the system also mutes when the phone rings - which is great because I never miss calls.

One hitch: It took my wife forever to learn how to use the remote that came with the home theater system. I was ready to spend $650 for another one until my installer showed me the $200 Harmony 676. It does everything I need, and Harmony's tech support is the best of any company I've worked with. The people there actually make programming changes while I'm on the phone with them - at no charge - and then I download the fixes to the remote.

If I were building our house today, I'd allow more room for the equipment and the wiring. It takes a lot of gear and wire to make eight rooms of audio and video work. Also, I'd have a dedicated media room where I wouldn't be distracted by the dishwasher or the kids, and I'd set it up for 6.1-channel surround sound. Finally, I'd like a system without any discs at all. When I can store all of my music and movies on a hard drive and stream it around the home wirelessly, it'll be time for another major upgrade. Check out Carl's Gear >>