How would I navigate?

I've settled for the Onkyo TX-NR515 AV Receiver. It reads a flash drive, the display of tracks appears on the front panel and you can navigate with the remote control.

Almost everything I wanted, I wanted the same but for external hard drives - but this is plenty good enough. I don't need an iPod or any other mp3 player, I don't need the TV on or any other monitor or display.

Flash drives are available to 64 gig now and if the port can't read a drive that large, I'll categorize the music on different, smaller flash drives.

Thanks Martykl for your help!

rev

From the web:
-------------
The iPod Competitors.

Basically: none.
In the last 5 years all the iPod competitors have been beaten, frustrated and ridiculed.

In fact, in the study of the highly successful Apple Marketing Strategy, besides its overwhelming success, the Apple iPod marks another outstanding result: the annihilation of competitors.

A result that has very few other examples in the history of marketing, and that according to us will remain forever in the Marketing Strategy Books and in marketing manuals and that will be taught for centuries in our Universities.

Marketing gurus all around the world will cite this example and study how it was accomplished.

rev

Martykl:

Thanks. I don't know the specific unit yet either. I'm looking at Onkyo or Pioneer home receivers in the $500 range.

Denon claims that their front USB port will read HDDs but there are conditions: Not all drives will be recognized, Media Transfer Protocol must be on the drive, there must be no songs with DRM protection in them. So you take your chances.

I have an Asus media player that reads an external drive but I was hoping to navigate by the front panel display on the AV Receiver. I don't want to have my 60" digital TV burning the bulbs just for navigation.

The front panel is set up for iCrap but I don't want to be cornered into that. Right now I'm looking for an iCrap alternative.

Thanks!

I don't know the specific unit in question, so I'm just guessing here...

I'd guess that the front panel will display the info - maybe inelegantly, but it will probably be there. Also, AVRs generally operate on the assumption that there's a monitor attached, so the info will likely go to the monitor, as well. If you're using this for music only, you might pick up a small monitor just for this purpose.

Good Luck

Marty