For $99, plus the cost of a home network adapter, you can enjoy music and photos from your computer in your home theater. Schedule TV recordings from the web, too.

Photography and music have gone digital in a big way. Thanks to TiVo, so has another popular pursuit — recording TV shows. The new Series2 TiVo lets you indulge all three pastimes while relaxing in your home theater.

Still don't know what TiVo is?

For a growing legion of devoted fans, TiVo is a noun that describes a machine — a sort of VCR on steroids that records TV shows onto a hard disk drive. Actually, TiVo is a service that makes a hard disk video recorder unbelievably uncomplicated — much easier to live with than a VCR. No more flashing 12:00. No more piles of unlabeled tapes. And no more convoluted timer menus. You can find and record shows by title, actor, team or keyword. You can even pause or rewind live TV.

The original TiVo radically changed the way people watch TV. The new Series2 TiVo also offers a new way to enjoy the digital photos and music files stored on your computer. If you already have a home network, you just add TiVo's $99 Home Media Option and a network adapter. You purchase HMO online at tivo.com. It's a simple process, much like activating or upgrading your TiVo account.

Jacked into your home network, a Series2 TiVo machine grabs files from the computers in your home network and makes them available in your living room. Imagine how much better those MP3 files will sound through your home audio system. And how about those shots of the Grand Canyon on your giant-screen TV?

But that's not all. With the Home Media Option, you can schedule your TV recordings from any Web-connected computer. Suppose you get to the office and someone reminds you that Julia Roberts is appearing on Oprah this afternoon. All you have to do is go online. A few clicks later, you're all set to record the woman with the Mona Lisa Smile.

Intrigued? So was I. But I wondered how well TiVo's user-friendly formula would hold up when mingled into the sometimes confounding PC environment. How difficult would it be to connect TiVo to a home network? Would the Home Media Option turn out to be something only a geek could love? To find out, I took it for a test drive.