External Hard Drives w/audiophile component...help


With todays market of internal hard drive components for digital music...I still have not found what I am looking for and could use some help. I would like to purchase a superior component for digital playback but have the ability to add external hard drives to hold the music without adding a computer to my system.

I would also like to display on the television monitor album art and digial tage information I have embedded in the digital file (or even folder). I would also like to add song lists created on the computer and (as if this is not already asking enough) run some of the inovative digital art programs if not displaying album art.

All my digital music will be in either high bit-rate lossy compression (mp3) or lossless compression. Any suggestions? Thank you for your time. Glenn
moserak
I'm currently using the digital-out on a Redwine Audio Modded Olive Musica as a transport. It's a one piece unit with a 250G hard drive. You can connect two external usb hard drives and it has wireless connection to any UpnP device ie NAS etc... There is a small front display, in addition any computer with a browser can be use as a frontend interface. I use a Samsung Q1b tablet ultra portable, some folks are using the new Nokia 770.

You might want to look at the Escient Fireball and McIntosh Music Server. They cost more but they may have the video features you are looking for. I have not use either product - all I wanted was a hard drive based transport. I believe the McIntosh had an Escient Fireball under the hood. 6moons.com had a 12/31/05 review.

Hope this helps.
An "internal hard drive component" is a computer with a proprietary interface. It just has less flexibility than what we consider to be a home computer. You can't avoid adding a computer to your system for digital playback because that's what they all are.

I second the Mac Mini ot Apple laptop. Why lock yourself into somebody elses idea of what it should be when you can get Mac and configure it however you want?
Apple's Mac Mini, Apple's iTV or an old G4 cube. All are fanless, ultra quiet, can run via a remote and have a very cool media program called front row that displays all that you are looking for. Plus you can add hard drives galore externally and an external sound card that outputs a digital coax signal to a DAC. That is what i am doing and it sounds pretty good.
The Sonos music server system allows you to port to a high quality Dac . It will show album art but will not directly display on the TV. It has a wireless display. An attached Network Drive can be connected to the Sonos Hub. If you did use a computer you could connect it via a svga cable to the TV monitor. You could choose to use the built in DAC on the Sonos if you wanted.