I know there's been some discussion on this topic before, but I had some specific questions that I haven't seen discussed here, so I'd like to start the discussion again.

Basically, now that I've transferred every CD I own to FLAC (about 400GB worth), I'm trying to figure out how to listen to my music around the house. I've been casually glancing at solutions to this "problem" for a few weeks, and I'm not quite enamored with any of them.

There are probably over 100 devices out there that will play music outside of the computer, but as far as I've seen, all of them either a) also attempt to be a storage vault for all of your music (AudioRequest, Rio Central, HP DEC, etc.), or b) expect to play music that's stored on a PC somewhere (TiVo HMO, SqueezeBox, SoundBridge, Rio Receiver, etc.).

The a) group would be fine if they could support enough drive space, and also act as a server to something in the b) group (without being restricted to only one particular device in the b) group). I think those requirements knock out the Central, and maybe the other a) options as well. My problem with the b) group is that I don't want to dedicate a PC to the task of storing music. Generally speaking, computers use way too much electricity, and give off way too much heat and noise. I want to have music available 24/7, but don't want to leave a computer running 24/7. Even if I could use something like wake on lan to start the computer up only when needed, it's still overkill for the little work it's actually doing to serve the file.

My main objection to the dedicated PC is electricity (my bill's WAY too high), but it's also that my regular PC doesn't, um, work all the time. I semi-regularly take it apart to goof with it or reconfigure things, which would leave the rest of the house un-musiced. Even just a periodic reboot would screw up what someone else in the house might be doing with the music.

So, the way I see it, my solution lies with the idea of separating the storage layer from the presentation layer, but having some separate storage box instead of a PC. Then, the options are plentiful as far as what to use for playing boxes.

So, here are my questions:

1. Does anyone know of any box that I could throw a couple of hard drives in that could just connect to the ethernet and talk SMB?

2. Barring that, is there a board or kit to set up a really low power linux PC? (Doing this would let me run a SlimServer, or Rio server, or UPNP AV server, and potentially allow a much wider choice of playing boxes)

3. Is there any other solution that I haven't thought of that meets the criteria above, plus the additional criteria of being easy and cheap (ideally $100-$150 sans drives)?

(Note: I'm not at all interested in video storage for this application. I've only got one TV that I actually watch, and I'm in love with my TiVo, so I'm not even thinking about HTPC or video archiving or any of those things yet. That being said, if the storage box had TV out or something and could do double duty as a playing box, that'd be cool. But, I'm afraid that it won't do that job as elegantly as a stand-alone playing box would, yet would add significantly to the expense, and to my time (picking out some jukebox app to run and getting it configured).)

I'd be very interested to hear anything anybody has to say on the subject, or any thing that they themselves have done to get their music around the house

Thanks in advance,
Aaron