I would like to get a hard drive jukebox to hook up to my home theater at some point. At one time I had a 2.1 Panasonic home theater system with an 80 gig hard drive. The hard drive part was great but I didn't like the sound all too much and there was no way to hook it up to a receiver and play back the contents of the hard drive (except maybe through the headphone jack). The Yamaha Musicast products are too expensive for me right now.
These are the specs I'm looking for:
80 Gig hard drive minimum (even thats too small) capable of recording and playing uncompressed music (IOW burning CDs direct to the hard drive with no loss of info).
The ability to play back a CD without any breaks (like a Pink Floyd CD where all the songs run together). In digital players its called gap free playback.
Either a database that recognizes CD titles and tracks or a simple way to hook it into a computer (or into a nearby phone line) to get that info.
An on screen display that will allow me to choose albums and tracks easily.
A digital output. HDMI is preferred but Optical or Coaxial are fine as are any hookups that allow the receiver (a Denon AVR 987) to do the D/A converting.
An Ipod would be great except I'm not sure about the quality of playback after I hook it to the receiver or wheether the on screen display will be sufficient with Denon's Idock. I do realize the files can be saved as .wav files which would lead to no loos of data on that end.
I was wondering if a PS3 or an XBox 360 would work for this purpose. I also have a Harmony remote which I think will address issues on that end (lack of remote).
Thanks for any input.
