Gadgets you may not need. You can get a plasma TV screen for "$4,500 to $10,000," with "Ambilight, a series of cold-cathode fluorescent lights that project various colors onto the wall just behind the television."

During the animated movie "Finding Nemo," for example, a deep-blue frame of light around the set "gives you a sense that you're watching the movie while you're underwater," said Jim Ninesling, vice president for digital television marketing at Philips Consumer Electronics.

Now to the twenty minutes we spend figuring out which DVD to watch, we can add another 5 for figuring out the right mood color to halo it with. But it actually is kind of cool, the lava lamp (which was supposed to be a TV lamp, you know) for the 00s.

(The locution "for the 90s" gave way to "for the new millennium," which became tedious, and inaccurate if you wanted to refer only to the decade. But no one says "for the 00s," and for good reason.)