Thanks for the link - I have looked at these. The Turtle Beach product is approaching the future, and yet it seems strangely out-of-date before it even gets up a head of steam. When a portable costing $279 can offer line out AND 40 GB of storage, it seems rather odd to consider a $200 component that would essentially just sit between such a device and the stereo, or between your PC/laptop and the stereo ... and one can purchase soundcards for PCs (they are often built into the PCs, they are on both of mine) that come pretty close to accomplishing what this component does. Unless you have an intense home network, the main benefit of the TB component appears to be that it allows you to keep a noisy PC in the next room while letting you control the music selection. That is a step in the right direction, but you still have to store the music on the PC.
When they add 120 GB of nearly noiseless storage to one of these devices, and the ability to play back many more file types, with digital video outs, then you've got a solution. And perhaps this already exists, in TiVo or other digital media players?
Birdman
