Three years back, I bought a non networked digital media player (Iomega) that came equipped with a 1TB disk for $100. I snagged it just for the disk and started to use as it played almost any kind of media you could toss into its hard drive. However, I got tired of unplugging it from the AVR and plugging it into the PC to add more content. Its then that I purchased a Western Digital SMP Live media player (WD). I left the Iomega on the PC and accessed its contents through the network via the WD. That worked but everytime I turned off the PC, the WD would recompile the media library after turning on the PC. It takes 15 minutes or so to compile. I got tired of having to use the PC to stream my digital media. A year after I bought the Iomega, I purchased two 1TB disk drives (again just $99) for backup purposes for my kids PCs. My kids haven't been using them to back up their data so I thought I would put at least one to use for now. I copied the contents of the Iomega onto the hard drive (took a good 5 hours to do) and then plugged the hard drive directly into the WD. I removed the network share of the WD and voila...I'm independent of the PC. I'm also ale to update the contents of the hard drive via the WD using the PC. I should have done this 2 years ago.
Here is a screen shots.. the WD is on the left.. the hard drive is tucked behind the TV and out of sight.
