I have an external hard drive that I have all my mp music on. I usually hook my laptop to the Ext HD and run a USB cable from my laptop to the 990 to play my music.

I'm looking for a more permanent solution from HD --> "something" --> 990, freeing up my laptop. Would squeezebox be a viable solution? Any recommendations?

I've got a Roku Labs SoundBridge , which would work. The Squeezebox is also a good option, and from what I've read it has better support (firmware updates, etc) than the SoundBridge. In either case, you'll need to have the hard drive hooked up to a PC on your network and have the PC turned on. You'd also need either a network cable to your equipment rack or a wireless network.

Well, guess what I stumbled onto today??!!

I was having some issues with my Samsung DVD-R135 and decided to exchange it at BestBuy. While browsing for a replacement DVD recorder, I happen to read the features of the Philips DVDR-3400. This player has a USB port in the front. I figured I'll take a chance on this, after all it's a DVD recorder right. Well, I got home and hooked it up and made a few DVD's. One of the season premiere of 24 and the other of a British Touring Car raace. The quality was equal to that of the Samsung. I was satisfied!!!

While browsing through the manual, it states that you can attach a UBS drive of mp3's and/or jpegs for playback through the DVDR-3400.

Just for curiousity sake I hooked up my 250GB hard-drive with mp3s to the DVD-R player. There's a button on the remote marked UBS. Upon pushing this button a file menu of all information on the hard-drive is displayed!!!

I navigated to my mp3 list and found a way to create a playlist. When finished I pushed play, and guess what??? The DAMN thing played the music from the playlist!!!!

The GUI is not that smooth, but this $hit works!!!

Just thought I would share this with all you Outlaws out there....

For those of you who might be in the same position I was in, this may be a way out. For around $150.00 how wrong can you go???

Nice find!

I have tried several methods:
a) 250GB Western Digital MyBook USB drive via Oppo DV-970HD's USB port
b) SD card connected to Oppo DV-970HD's card reader
c) Linux laptop to 990 via USB

The most convenient (in my opinion) is the SD card via the Oppo DVD player because it requires no additional connections and I can take the music with me on my PDA. However, space is an issue, so I only keep my "A" list in my SD card and I am constantly updating it.

I am pretty hooked on Amarok for managing my mysic library and that means the laptop, so that's still my second choice. However, hooking up my external USB drive via the Oppo DVD player let's me run a slide show with images on the same drive while listening to music, so that's my preferred method when entertaining.

So, just like Demus and myself have already found out, having a DVD player with a USB port is pretty handy - not to mention cool.

The Sonos systems I've seen are pretty cool. Wireless interfaces that are very iPod-ish. Downside is cost. I think it's about $750 MSRP for the controller and one "box" that will interface to your 990. A cool device, though and the interface is much nicer than the Squeezebox. Squeezebox is a great value, though.

I've seen your Roku M500 review, and was disappointed you didn't manage to include FLAC in your shootout. I'm intrigued as to the reasons you couldn't convince Firefly to serve FLAC files.

In your review you also say that there is a small difference in audio quality between CD on Yamaha DVD-S1500 optical vs WAV on Roku M500 optical. I'm interested in your thoughts as to the underlying reasons given that the streams are digital all the way to the 990.

I'm intrigued why I couldn't convince Firefly to serve them, either - it seemed to have something to do with the playlist interface in Firefly at the time. It clearly is possible, but I just simply could not get Firefly to do me any good. I've since updated Firefly (out of necessity since the SoundBridge does not with with iTunes 7.0 even still) and the newer version at least syncs playlists with iTunes now, but I haven't had time to try re-visiting my earlier tests.

The difference between WAV and original CD was extremely small - when I wrote the review last year, I said "the WAV files were very comparable to listening to the original disc in my DVD player, as one would hope would be the case – if there were differences, they were very slight." In a comparison like that, even a dB or so of difference in output levels could produce subtle hints of one being better than the other, which is probably why I didn't find the two to be almost but mayby not truly identical.