I think more and more pre-amps are going to be like this one http://usa.denon.com/ProductDetails/2243.asp -- connected to a home network.

Media Servers have finally arrived at the "appliance" stage. If you can use a toaster, you can probably put your music, videos, and pictures into a media server -- either one running on your PC like iTunes or into a network device that has a server built in.

For several years the media server client industry, like the Soundbridge, the Slinky, etc, has been growing, but now we finally have some accepted standards for media server communication in wide useage with uPnP.

It would be really fantastic to have a receiver with this uPnP client capability built in to it!

B