Extreme Real Estate: Homes With Brains

Super-premium system
Project: In-home disco
System designer: Engineered Environments, Alameda, Calif.
Price: $300,000

Press a button in this penthouse pied-a-terre and the home's living and dining rooms automatically transform into a 2,000-square-foot professional-caliber disco, complete with laser lights, plasma video screens and a 110-decibel sound system.

Blackout shades cover the windows, video projectors drop from the ceiling and a backlit waterfall pop ups behind the bar as high-end Genelec speakers and Velodyne subwoofers hidden behind "acoustically transparent" fabric crank out the beat.

The system also includes a high-tech version of a real disco's velvet rope line.

Guests coming to the party must enter through a foyer that includes an LCD display and a flip-down mouse and keyboard visitors use to sign in as a video camera snaps a photo of them.

To keep your neighbors happy, the system -- which won a CEDIA gold medal for special projects last year -- also includes floating acoustical ceiling treatments and special floors and walls designed to minimize sound transmission to other units.

If all of that isn't enough for you, the penthouse hosts a 50-inch pop-up plasma TV in the master bedroom, as well as TV screens set into both bathrooms' mirrors.