Direct connection Ext. hard drive to stereo

[pgozinia]

i don't want wireless! i don't want to buy a laptop!! PMP's are also too expensive!

i just want to be able to use my 50GB of music with my stereo AT my stereo! and if its not clear already...do it CHEAP!

i have a 120GB external hard drive. it seems to me that all an ipod type player is is a hard drive with a piece of hardware that reads whats on it and sends to an amp? this piece has to cost next to nothing???

is there a product out there than can read my EHD and pull songs off it and send it to my stereo? if there isn't...seems like there should be though...i suppose next will be all amps will have 300GB of storage?

thanks!

 

[MDS]

There are quite a few options for streaming music from the computer to the stereo. Take Squeezebox2 from slimdevices.

If you connnect your external hard drive to the computer using usb or firewire, then just share the drive on the network and the squeezebox can access it. Maxtor has new external drives that are basically network attached storage - you can plug it directly into a router and it will appear to the network as another computer. Devices like the squeezebox can then use it as the source for streaming music.

Now if you don't want to buy a device like the squeezebox, you can connect the sound card directly to the stereo using the sound card's line out jack and just use a software player like WinAmp or Windows Media Player to play the songs from the computer.