Your car has central locking operated by remote control. Why doesn’t your house? When you lock your car and leave it the alarm automatically arms itself. Why won’t your house do that? The car turns on its interior light when you open a door. Your fridge can do that, why can’t your house?

Well, your house can do all these things. It’s just a matter of having the wiring in your house integrated — just like the car’s has been. Everything works together with everything else in a car, but even in the 21st century, houses remain collections of individual parts all wired independently, with no interaction at all. And they’ve been like this for so long, it all seems normal.

Think what’s possible just by integrating the alarm system and the lighting. As you open the front door, the switch not only tells the alarm that the door is open, but turns on the lights as well. As you enter a room, a motion detector can activate the light switch as well. So when your guest struggles out of the spare bedroom at 2am looking for the bathroom, the motion detectors pick up the movement and switch on the hallway lights at 25 per cent — just enough to guide your guest to the bathroom, but not enough to wake everyone else.

With a clever lighting system like Clipsal’s C-Bus, if you hear something go bump in the night, you can turn on every light in the house with a single switch at your bedside table.

Have everything integrated in the house and, with a single button on a remote control, you can turn on your home-theatre system, dim the lights, close the curtains, set the airconditioning and turn on the popcorn machine. You can even set the phone to “do not disturb”.

If all this amazes you, you’ll be astounded to know that it’s regarded as a bit old hat by experienced installers. Ask David Beauchamp of Sydney’s Switched On Living about complicated jobs and he’ll tell you about the home he set up for a paraplegic customer — a cinema, music in every room, full security and remote-control everything. Even more impressive: it’s all operated by voice.

Such systems may be easy to operate, but the wiring and system control is complex and needs to be set up by an experienced installer. And they’re a whole lot cheaper if you involve your installer right from blueprint stage. Laying cable during construction or when a house is being renovated greatly reduces the cost.

David Traino of The Director’s Chair in Sydney says that new home builders are mostly well off the pace. “Lots of them include home-theatre rooms in their plans, but how many locate a power point about a metre off the floor on the wall where the plasma screen will go? How many include cabling for rear speakers or a telephone point for the modem where a personal video recorder will be positioned?” he asks.

Total “convergence” isn’t everyone’s idea of a dream home, though, and this is where Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre software is clever. It goes much of the way towards a converged home at a fraction of the cost, through the very simple process for integrating your computer with your major home systems. (You buy the Microsoft software ready loaded into a new computer from all the usual manufacturers, such as Toshiba, Acer and HP.)

If it has ever stuck you as a bit of a waste that you can’t listen to all the music stored on your computer via your stereo system, then Media Centre is for you.

Instead of having a hard disc in your video recorder, another for your photographs, another storing you music and yet another in your computer, Media Centre pulls them all together. You can view your photographs on your television screen, log onto the internet in the kitchen and listen to your music in any room of the house.

An appropriately specified computer can play, record and pause broadcast television, control DVDs, play and record music and share digital still shots and videos. And you can play games, download music and access email — all the traditional province of a computer.

With a Media Centre computer, you’ll use the television more often than the computer monitor, and instead of a keyboard, you’ll be using Microsoft’s remote to control the whole system.

“People no longer need a separate stereo, VCR, DVD player and computer — this one device does it all with a single remote,” says Danny beck from Microsoft.

The system is intuitive and practical. As you listen to a CD, you’re offered the option of copying it to your hard drive. The computer will call up the internet to identify the disc, and capture title and track info to index the recording. From then on, you can listen to the disc without having to locate it in your CD collection.

Just how will this improve your life? Jamie Oliver may make cooking look easy, but you’re probably struggling to keep up with his instructions. So pause him — you can even do it on broadcast — and start him when you’re ready for the next step.

Can’t find the time to catch up with the television shows you’ve recorded? Now you can watch them on the bus. Creative Labs Zen Portable Media Centre is compatible with Media Centre software. This amazing little machine packs a 20-gigabyte hard drive and a 9.5cm screen, and stores up to 85 hours of video or up to 9000 songs. It can also hold tens of thousands of photos and play up to seven hours of video or 22 hours of audio between recharges. Phew! And you thought your iPod was sexy.

So how much is an integrated home system going to cost you? Depending on how much work needs to be done, it can set you back anywhere between $5000 and $100,000.

For more great ideas and practical solutions for your home see http://www.reallivingmag.com.au/