Entertainment on the House

By Michael Demarest

And in it, as "media rooms" usher in a new way of life

Like the lovelorn belter of the 1940s ballad Don't Get Around Much Anymore, more and more Americans are becoming chronic stay-at-homes. The high price of a night on the town is a contributing factor, but the lure of an evening in the house is more apt to center on what their owners call media rooms or entertainment centers.

Begotten by the electronics revolution, the thoroughly modern media room comprises an eye-and ear-boggling assemblage of spectacle and sound. According to industry executives, costly home entertainment equipment is among the hottest merchandise around. Scores of specialty shops with names like Video Concepts and Videomart have sprung up to supply sophisticated gadgetry to home-media junkies. Annual stereo and video sales across the country are running at about $2 billion. Says Walter Fisher, Zenith Radio Corp. marketing executive vice president: "The revolution in entertainment electronics has hit not only the high-technology stores but the American lifestyle as well."

For upwards of $14,000, the home entertainer can furnish his room with, say, a big-screen Kloss Novabeam projection TV, a Sony Betamax video recorder, a Panasonic video-tape color camera, an RCA videodisc player, a Yamaha audionics stereo with electrostatic-charged speakers, a film library, video tapes and discs, stereo records and Atari electronic games. He may add specially crafted lounge chairs at $1,000 each and banquettes ($2,000). For the addicted media roominator there is also a computer to keep the collection organized. Some dealers complain that advances in equipment are so rapid there is no way to keep up with the latest electronic toys.

For the wealthy, a media room can be an Ali Baba's cave. Gerald Hill, a Wisconsin-based oil explorer, has electronic centers both at his Lake Geneva home and aboard his 86-ft. yacht, Bravo Papa. In addition to a vast array of video-stereo equipment in the home room, he has a library of 2,000 movies, including the entire John Wayne film canon and all episodes of the M*A*S*H TV series. The equipment in the seagoing media room includes a Javelin night-vision TV camera that scans the ocean or shoreline and projects what it sees on a wide screen amidships. Hollywood Writer-Director Melville Shavelson has so much electronic gear--including a computer hooked up to a U.P.I, news wire--that he has had to divide it between two rooms. Says he: "Theater for the home is already here. A media room becomes a focal point for the family. You make your own popcorn, make sodas at the fountain, drinks, barbecue. I have over my sons and daughters and grandchildren. It's total information. It's total entertainment."

By no means is media mania limited to tycoons or luminaries. For about $7,000, School Administrator Carl Pasco ARCE has furnished his North Chicago home with a Kloss TV projector, a complete stereo system, subscription TV and a 300-record library. He plans all his entertainment around the video room, inviting friends and following up dinner with a chaser of a Katharine Hepburn movie or Bette Midler special. Says Bachelor Pasco: "Everyone's entitled to an , indulgence."

At parties thrown by one Mid-western home entertainer, guests are invited to the media room to watch an instant videocast of the other guests out in the garden. Many parents project Atari games like Space Invaders and Missile Command for their children on a 7-ft. screen. Super Bowl games look super that way too. Says Chicago Lawyer Charles Witz, a divorcee who has three sons at home: "I encourage them to bring their friends here, where I can build some control over their environment." Boasts Witz, who has projection TV and a library of film and music: "I have enough movies taped to last me for a year without ever going out." Media roomies who share his enthusiasm rattle on endlessly about the advantages of not getting around much any more: no need to fight for a cab, no danger of getting mugged, no standing in line for tickets. And, they invariably point out, once one has paid all those big bucks for the home Odeon, entertainment is for ever after . . . on the house.

--By Michael Demarest. Reported by Patricia Delaney/Chicago

With reporting by Patricia Delaney

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