I'd like a single box that hooks up to my stereo, holds my entire music collection, lets me browse/select albums, and see what's playing now. I would very much prefer this to be an open, hackable system. (Why, of course I should be able to ssh to my stereo, or NFS-mount the hard drive from my laptop in the kitchen.) The box itself needs a couple of buttons (play, pause, and something to browse the music collection) and a display to tell you what you're browsing or what you're listening to. I don't care too much about the quality of the onboard audio hardware as long as it has USB output, because I have a nice little USB DAC (http://www.stereo-link.com/) that sounds just fine.

A remote control would be nice. The ability to select individual songs (as opposed to whole albums) would be nice, but not essential. A "play random albums forever" mode would be cool, but I could always ssh in to start that up.

On reflection, I realized that what I'm looking for is just an iPod mutated into a stereo component: turn it horizontal, give it an AC plug instead of a battery, Ethernet and/or wifi access to the LAN, and make it a USB host so I can plug it into my Stereo-Link. (Or plug a portable hard drive in, or attach my iPod nano to recharge/refill...) A decent-quality onboard DAC would be nice for portability -- e.g. carry it into the kitchen and hook it up to the stereo there.

The closest product I've found is the Blackbird (http://www.digitaltechniques.com/) -- basically a small/quiet PC running Linux and some software they wrote (sounds like a third-rate knockoff of mpd that only has a web interface). It sounds hackable enough to fix (e.g. replace Slackware with Debian and install mpd), but for some moronic reason the box itself has no display and very few controls -- the only way to control it is with a web browser on a PC or PDA. Dumb.

Or I could buy a general purpose small, low-noise, low-power PC (like http://www.cappuccinopc.com/slimpro-sp625f.asp), install Debian and mpd, and have fun ... but again, there's no display and no controls. These things are computers, not audio components. I'm sure I could get great sound of it with my Stereo-Link, but again: I don't want to have to use a laptop to control the silly thing!

What really ticks me off is that people are starting to make really beautiful, nicely-designed devices with real user interfaces and (apparently) good-to-great sound (http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_squeezebox.html, http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_transporter.html) ... but they don't store the music themselves! You need to have a PC or NAS running somewhere on your home network to supply the actual bits.

Why, oh why, can't someone put two and two together and create a box with a hard drive, a CPU, an operating system, and a user interface on the front panel? Am I missing something here?

(Oh yeah, there's one little problem in that no Microsoft products are allowed in our home. So if someone is selling my dream product but it's running WinCE or XP "Media Center Edition" ... too bad.)

You should take a look at the Mac Mini. You can even run Linux in it (if you wish.)

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

i'm confused as to why you haven't just built a small media server running linux... ?

Same reason I haven't bought a Mac Mini, as the previous poster suggested: no user interface! I want something that's a small/quiet computer *and* a stereo component. At the very least, it needs a play/pause button and a display to tell me what's playing.

(Hooking it up to a TV is not an option, since I don't have a TV. And the whole point is to *simplify* life by putting all my music in one box with one set of controls. Adding a small computer with a keyboard and a mouse and a monitor and a power cable and Ethernet cable etc. etc. is a long way from simplification.)

I think what I really want is the Slim Devices Transporter (http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_transporter.html) with a hard drive. Which would look an awful lot like an iPod transmogrified into a home stereo component. I'm quite surprised that no one is selling such a box yet.

original xbox with LCD mod running xbox media center.

A Olive network player might be what you're looking for
It's a Squeezebox with a hard drive and it (apparently) runs Linux.

Again It's already been mentioned, but I think what you are looking for more specifically with a high asking price is the Olive Opus

http://www.olive.us/p_bin/?cid=01_07_opus&...40138c15481c9bb

I am telling you. The Mac Mini is your best option. I have one. It does have a remote control and you can buy a converter to connect it to your TV. You will have the whole computer screen as interface. if you want or the simplified media playing interface. Similar to the ones only the most expensive Vista versions or XP media center edition have. It is less expensive than Olive. besides, people that bought Olive are very disappointed because it crashes very often.

Overheating or software issues?

How about a Buffalo Linkstation Live or Pro with hacked firmware and SlimServer running on it. Use that to feed a Squeezebox. Very quiet, very small, remote control like you're wanting and can still use the LinkStation for other storage needs.

BTW: I have both a LinkStation Live and Pro in the 500GB size. Both on sale from Fry's. Fantastic little unit.

http://www.linkstationwiki.net for all your questions.

I think there are some low power, low-noise NASes out there. this comes up a lot on the slimdevices forums and some people are happing running slimserver on their NAS stored away somewhere inconspicuous.

the players with HDs in them tend to have not-so-great displays but escient makes some with video out so you can navigate with your TV. otherwise slim and sonos really have the best UIs around. slim stuff is hackable and you can use 3rd party remotes like the ones from nokia with them (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35011)

Josh

I think the nearest you are going to get is a Sonos http://www.sonos.com/system and a NAS in a cupboard somewhere. (Sonos is a closed system but it's Linux based if it makes any difference).

I think that most companies don't really do a works without a PC thing because you need to get the music onto the thing somehow so they reason they might as well save on the hard disk in their box and use your PC as storage missing the fact that you may not want to leave the PC on all the time.