(MONEY Magazine) – The shimmering silver compact disks look just like those that play music; their player-machine, like another black box for your stereo rack. But this gear gets hooked up to your television set. And it's interactive, which means you can use it for state-of-the-art video games and to otherwise cozy up to your TV. You'll soon be hearing plenty about this new form of advanced technology, known as the interactive compact disk. This month, Philips will begin selling its $1,400 interactive-CD system; the Commodore $999 machine arrived in stores this past April. These machines show still or moving pictures and text and deliver CD-quality sound. They are not to be confused with CD-ROM devices, which you must hook up to a computer and whose compact disks are not always interactive. You interact with these CDs by means of a special remote control. For example, a golf CD lets you hit a round of 18 holes without leaving your easy chair. You see a photo of an actual fairway and, using your remote control, choose a club, set direction and trajectory and make a shot. The image shifts to show where your ball has landed. When you sink a putt, you hear gentle applause from the crowd. Interactive disks generally cost $40 to $60, but they can go as high as $395. About 80 CDs are now available for the Commodore, including disks based on Grolier's encyclopedia, a game called Battle Chess and an atlas CD that displays maps and emits the appropriate folk music as you skip around the globe. Among the 50 titles Philips promises by year-end: a Sesame Street disk that will let kids visit Bert and Ernie's house; a video jukebox that allows you to hear Beethoven as it flashes a capsule biography of the composer; and a Smithsonian CD that permits you to ''walk through'' the museum and choose the exhibits that interest you while listening to a ''tour guide.'' You can't use the disks made for the Commodore on the Philips or vice versa, however. So be sure to check out which software appeals to you before buying either machine.