I love my Alesis Masterlink and it is in your budget but only 40 gig drive. I use it to burn compilation CD's. Music played off the HD sounds awesome. You can hack it and put in a larger hard drive, instructions on line but not sure of the max HD size that the bios will accept. Tascam makes a rig that uses CF Cards. There are 128 gig cards available, but they cost more than the rig. No album art or video out on each. By the way, there is no comparison between cd's burned on a PC (I have a $5,000 gateway + upgraded PC and line conditioner, lacie external CD burner w/FW) and the Masterlink. Masterlink is studio quality; PC just too noisey.
CD recorders with hard disk
There use to be a number of cd player/recorders with very large hard drives to store all your cd's...they would then allow you to do playlists, look at album graphics, even project to a tv or monitor. Yamaha used to make one. Do these still exist? Not as popular as they used to be. I was looking in the sub $1000 range for such a device.
Thanks
Thanks