Many of you have been writing in, asking, “How does Tino Manor handle its A/V entertainment needs?”

Well, okay, none of you have actually asked — recently. But I spent some time this afternoon re-wiring this mess, so you’re going to hear about it.

This is where the house’s audiovisual entertainment comes from:

Clicking on the picture will pop up a larger version. In the rack on tie right, from the bottom you find:

• An original TiVo
• A very old Sony satellite receiver
• A Sony stereo receiver, used really just as a switch and an amplifier
• A Philips DVD player/recorder
• A Philips DVD player, for playing Region 2 DVDs
• A Sony DVD player, for playing Region 1 DVDs
• A Sony NTSC VCR
• A Daewoo PAL VCR
• A manual AV switch for switching between the VCRs and two of the DVDs
• A frighteningly old TV with AV inputs, used to see whether all this is working
• A Radio Shack RF modulator
• A Cisco 765 ISDN router
• A 110-220 transformer for running the PAL VCR
• An auxiliary antenna for the wireless network

Also in the AV rack but not visible are: a UPS to make sure that we don’t miss a second of TV during our frequent power blips; a couple of distribution amplifiers; a speaker switch; some gizmotry to see to it that all of this can be controlled with IR remotes from anywhere in the house; and several miles of wire.

Speaking of remotes: I think that this has got out of hand.

Left to right here you have remote controls for:

• The projector
• Sony DVD
• Daewoo VCR
• Sony VCR
• Philips VCR #1
• Philips VCR #2
• Sony VCR again — some controls are only on this remote control and not on the other
• X-10 lights
• Philips Pronto, which is supposed to replace all of the others, but doesn’t
• TiVo
• Sony stereo receiver

And yes, all of these are necessary all the time. Before long I will have to buy a bigger coffee table.

The problem with the Pronto, which is supposed to be the be-all and end-all of universal remote controls, and which costs several hundred dollars, is that it’s based around a touchscreen. This sounds like a great idea, since it’s infinitely customizable; but the problem is that you have to look at the thing because there’s no tactile feedback. And because you can’t fit too much on the screen at one time, you’ve got to split the functions of most devices onto several pages — so in the end I wind up with an armload of remote controls.

And you still have to re-wire things if you want to use the Playstation.