most of the information would be sourced from the net (other than that embedded in the id3 tags for each song) so googling for it is possible however access via a plugin would be much easier and more focussed and therefore more likely to be done - just to see.

hdd audio is still in it's infancy, it could be easier to setup, out of the box sound quality could be better however with a lot of major players now entering the market (without lumping the server, drives and everything else into one box) it's about to go ballistic. there is still the tendancy toward proprietory or non standard protocols but once all that is sorted out it'll be great. at present i believe slim devices have got it spot on - a killer product (digital output) with a low price that works using equipment most already have (a pc).

i'd like to see a pure network transport using the squeezebox protocols (or upnp and a upnp plugin for slimserver / squeezebox) that was full width and has a good psu built in. that would be the only thing that'd make me put my hand in my pocket.