The audiotron is a nice little device by Turtle Beach (the sound card guys). Basically, its a stereo-component networked MP3 player.

In computer terms, its basically a processor, some memory, a network interface (or in some cases, two... Ethernet and HPNA), and an LCD display. Then a line-level audio output (RCA or toslink).

You tell your windows machine to share your "My Music" folder, plug the Audiotron into your receiver and your network. (For those of you without Cat 5, the HPNA works nicely, as alot of people who use these devices probably already have a phone jack near their stereo for a Tivo devices... but then, I'm a Broadcom employee and probably one of the few people who ever used HPNA :) ) When you turn the Audiotron on, it searches the network for exported MP3's and keeps an internal catalog.

You then have a "virtual CD player". Basically, all your MP3's can be streamed over the network to the Audiotron (it caches like 3 of them), and played. It can also do Internet Radio, although I've never used this feature.

It also has a very nice http-based API to query your audiotrons, and instruct them to play things (this is how I do my system, using the web browser on the iPronto to send commands to my Audiotron)

Another nice feature about the Audiotron, unlike using a PC or many of the other "media servers" out there, is it has an LCD readout. You don't need a monitor or TV on to view things. Instead of trying to do everything (PVR, video, audio, photos, mp3's etc etc) and using a nice graphical interface which requires a monitor, its basically a "CD replacement" for guys like me who want to pack away all their CDs, convert them to MP3, and have a poor-man's whole-home audio distribution system.