Americans seem to feel they have an inalienable right not merely to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but also to watch TV wherever they want to. The problem is, many environments that are hospitable to the human body aren't so kind to TV sets. The spray of warm water that feels so good to us might destroy a TV—unless that TV comes from Aquatic AV.

Aquatic AV specializes in audio/video gear for boats, and I don't mean the prissy superyachts that Jay-Z lounges on in Monte Carlo—I mean the workaday boats you use to party on Lake Powell or catch grouper in the Gulf of Mexico. When the company decided to create TVs for the bathroom, the kitchen, and the patio, its engineers were up to the challenge.

The company made its new TVs not only water-resistant, but waterproof. The cabinets of the 17-inch and 8.5-inch sets are sealed except for a coaxial DC power jack on the side. Seal up this jack, and the TV can be completely submerged; the company showed me a video in which the 17-inch model operates while fully underwater. Even without the jack sealed, the TV can deal with any bathroom mishap or Texas gulleywasher. To test the seals, I pour my dogs' water dish over the top of the TV right after I set it up on my patio. My stunt rattles my wife's nerves, but the TV is unscathed. It does shut off (probably some water snuck into the DC power jack and triggered a protection circuit in the external power supply), but it comes right back on when I touch the power button.

How does one gets audio/video signals into this sealed-up screen? The secret is 802.11a/g wireless network technology, better known as WiFi. An included interface box accepts audio and video signals from any A/V source device (such as a DVD player) or from the recording output of an A/V receiver. It transmits those signals digitally to the LCD screen via WiFi. Thus, the screen has no A/V inputs, just a small antenna to pick up the WiFi signal.

Waterproof speakers hide in the back of the set. There's an analog TV tuner built into the transmitter; analog broadcasts are slated to end next year, but the tuner will still work with unscrambled cable TV channels. The set is available in the silver finish you see here, and also in black or white. The set has keyhole-style mounting holes in back, and a wall-mount bracket is also supplied.

The transmitter also has a jack for an included infrared emitter, which lets you control your A/V source device from whatever room or patio the TV inhabits. When you point the source device's remote at the TV, the TV sends the remote signals back to the transmitter via WiFi, and the transmitter blasts them out through the IR emitter.

I worried that the Aquatic AV TV might require a frustratingly complex setup procedure, as WiFi routers sometimes do, but when I plug everything in it just works. The transmitter and the TV "find" each other, and within seconds I am sitting in my backyard watching video from the DVD player in my living room. My DVD player remote works as reliably and quickly as it would if I were sitting right in front of the player.

In my home, the digital A/V transmission is robust and noise-free at 50 feet, although I do notice an occasional big glitch—the result, I assume, of a neighbor using a 2.4-gigahertz cordless phone. In several evenings' (and many baths') worth of DVDs and TV shows, I find the image surpsingly clean for a wireless system. This is not a high-performance video display, though: The transmitter accepts only standard-definition 480i signals, and the only adjustments available on the TV are volume, contrast, and brightness. The set fails most of the video processing tests on the HQV Benchmark test DVD. But when you're sitting in the bathtub watching The Sopranos on a 17-inch screen, you're not too concerned about colorimetry or gamma or upconversion artifacts. On a screen this small, none of these problems proves troublesome.

The model Aquatic AV sends me has a mirrorized screen covering the LCD panel, so it becomes a mirror when the set is turned off. This is a handy feature for the bathroom. If the room is brightly lit or the scene on-screen is dark, though, Tony Soprano will share the frame with a reflected image of your room. Fortunately, for non-bathroom applications, Aquatic AV offers versions without the mirrorized screen.

This set makes multiroom video so easy that I expect installers will use it even where the waterproof feature isn't needed, such as in bedrooms, home gyms, and garages. The Aquatic AV TV is the easiest, most reliable way I know of to spread video to any and every room of the home—and to any part of the backyard.

DESCRIPTION
Wall-mount 17-inch waterproof LCD television with 802.11a/g wireless interface. Includes wireless transmitter/analog TV tuner that connects to an audio/video source device or A/V receiver. Wall mount included.

RESOLUTION
1440 x 900 pixels

CONNECTIONS
TV: mini F-connector for antenna
Transmitter: S-video input, composite video input, stereo audio input, 3.5mm jack for IR output, RJ-45 Ethernet jack, mini F-connector for antenna, RCA jack for TV tuner RF input

DIMENSIONS
TV: 18.7 x 12.5 x 2.6 inches (hwd)
Transmitter: 1.7 x 9.3 x 8.4 inches (hwd, with antenna)

PRICE/CONTACT
PRICE: wireless version $1,999, wired version $1,499
CONTACT: 408.559.1668, aquaticav.com