I discovered that the folks at Iomega make a couple of very affordable media servers that may suit some AC members.
The two units that appear to be the best deals are the Screen Play Plus HD, and the Screen Play Director HD. The Plus HD unit includes 1 TB of onboard storage, has HDMI, USB and a coax digital output, and will support MP3, WAV and WMA music data formats. The Director HD also includes the 1TB of hard drive space, and adds ethernet connections (and is claimed to be wireless ready, but you need to add an extra cost adaptor), will also accommodate OGG and AAC files in addition to the WAV, and WMA formats, and has a toslink optical output instead of the coax. Prices for the two units range from about $125 to $170, and the units are available through Amazon with free shipping. Both have USB 2 inputs for transferring stuff from your computer to the server.
I ripped my CD collection into WAV files (over 400 CDs) using EAC, and then transferred them to the older version of the Screen Play HD, and it is working like a champ as a source feeding my DAC.
Now there are some down sides to getting into the media server world this cheaply. First, the software included is spartan at best. YOU must figure out how you want to organize your music, and then do so. The access time with huge folders full of uncompressed music files can be slow, so it helps to keep folder sizes as small as possible. Second... the build quality is classically cheap and cheerful. The remotes are both skinny plastic no frills pieces, and the housings for the units are also basic. The built in fan noise is a bit high when you first fire up the units, but then quiets down to more or less inaudible when you get to playing music.
So, if you already own a PC, don't mind taking the time to rip your CDs to WAV files, and can organize your music so you know how to find it, one or the other of these little media servers might just float your boat. Both servers seem to have been designed to also store movies and photos (although again, without a lot of variety in terms of what formats they will accommodate), so they might be useful for clearing stuff off your over crowded PC hard drive as well.
