What I desired was a networked mp3 store that would feed a few players/modes...

Hey, now that's a good idea. Have a central repository for your all your music files. Interesting. You're missing one other thing the network store could do, though:

It could serve up files to a component in your home stereo system. This could be a dedicated player with no storage of its own. It could stream the files from your server via a network connection: Either through ethernet, or through an ethernet-like home networking card that uses standard telephone lines.

Such a player, once its engineering and embedded software was completed, would be dirt-cheap to manufacture and cost only a couple hundred dollars.

What a great idea. Wow, maybe somebody should design one of these?

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Tony Fabris