Kenwood VRS-N8100 Network Receiver will have to be next investment in the digital media equipment.

This AV receiver not only brings 100 watts x 6 channels of Kenwood's sound quality powered by an advanced 32-bit SHARC processor.

What's really amazing is the ability to interface with your PC via a Wi-Fi® or wired Ethernet network. Navigation screens displayed on your TV make it easy to browse the contents of your hard drive and select audio, video, or still picture files to stream to your home theater system's speakers and TV.

It handles the following file formats:

• MP3, WMA, WAV, and Ogg Vorbis audio
• MPEG1, MPEG2, and XviD video
• JPEG, BMP, GIF, and PNG digital photos

so if you have your PC running, there actually won't be a need to create DIVx DVDs or MP3 CDs anymore to consume your digital content.

This unit even has a front panel PCMCIA card slot which will accept media card adapters so you can display pictures from digital cameras on the video monitor of your home theater. With an adapater you can use all your CompactFlash, Memory Stick, SD Memory Card, Smart Media, etc.

Interesting…. it has Surround Back Preouts: the receiver includes left and right preamp outputs for surround back channels. So if you wish to connect wireless active speakers for the surround back channels, that carry an own amplifier, that should work… cool

As you can see, they even have component signals going in and out – best to plugin your high def Plasma TV and DVD recorder to it…

If you are looking for a similar device featuring HDMI in/output ( not even my new HD Recorder has that, but some high end digital projectors could utilize that), but lacking the network capabilities, take a look at the Panasonic SA-XR 70 ...