Those relatively small and realistic-looking “aquariums” that so artfully occupy some computer monitors these days as screen savers now come in dazzling plasma and LCD quality, too, providing much larger “fish tanks,” thanks to a few enterprising companies that provide aquatic life and other images for the large flat-screen crowd.
Companies like Screen Dreams Publishing, Colorcalm and Jumby Bay Studios are creating DVD disks for about $20 each that allow owners of large-screen sets to make the most of their monitors when they aren’t being used for their primary purpose. Besides the various aquariums first created for computer monitors, new plasma- and LCD-enhanced images that run on continuous loops include classic and modern artwork that change every couple of minutes, water falls, changing sky conditions, and logs burning in a variety of fireplaces.
That fireplace idea, of course, was taken from a 1980s-era VCR tape that showed only burning logs, which was sometimes broadcast on a handful of stations around the holidays. According to published reports, some of the super-sized screen savers (which technically aren’t “screen savers” at all because idle TV monitors are just simply turned off!) also come with optional background music ranging from jazz to country to classical.
