I wandered into Dixons today and saw this: http://www.dixons.co.uk/product.php?sku=490188

It's a mini hi-fi system with DAB radio, DVD player, and 40Gb worth of CD recorder. I daresay it's not gapless, it only supports MP3 and WMA (no lossless encodings), there's no phonos in or out, and I don't fancy trying to access a 40Gb collection using a 2x16 character VFD (there's no TV UI), but for UKP450 you can't really complain too much.

When reading up on it I also found the Cambridge Audio Azur 640H which does sound rather more like it (lossless, internet radio, streaming client, TV UI, CDRW, SPDIF out) but costs UKP500 as a line-level component. Judging from the back panel, it's based on a mini-ITX PC. Would be nice to know whether it runs Linux...

More and more companies seem to be finally realising there's a market for this stuff...

Peter

The back panel of the Cambridge Audio box isn't inspiring me with confidence on attention to detail. Look at the right hand side. In particular the on/off switch and the markings around it.

That image has to be a fake. The analog outs have the L and R markings upsidedown and on the wrong jacks. The lights inegrated into the ethernet jack are also too big it seems.

fyi, Richer Sounds in Cambridge has one of these with a perspex lid in their showroom. Mini ITX board (Epia) with a fan (doh!) plus a custom board with the audio stuff on it and an insane array of linear regulators for every subsystem (though why separating the front panel button power from, say, the HDD power, improves things escapes me).

Hugo