An on-screen graphical user interface will allow you to navigate through and play your audio files using a remote control. Just think, no longer will you have to sit on the couch and squint at the itty-bitty LCD on your stereo receiver. Instead, you can search through all of your audio files as they're displayed in a reasonable-sized font on your TV. Also, a range of display animations will pop up on the TV and move along with the beat of the music. Now that is technology at work.

Besides being rather user-friendly, this device really does quite a lot. The ARQ2 from ReQuest Multimedia features a CD Player, Music Jukebox, and an Internet & MP3 music player. If you have a collection of CDs or music files of your own, don't worry about it not being compatible with this device. It reads WAV, MP3, and CD-R/CD-RW files. When you add your CD music files to the device's internal hard drive, rest assured that you'll find that file again. Each CD is assigned an automatic CD identification, and each song is automatically named.

The ARQ2 connects to your home network and entertainment system using a serial RS-232 mini-jack, 2 USB ports, an IR receiver, a 10/100Base T RJ-45 jack, coax and optical digital outputs, stereo RCA jacks, and composite video and S-video, NTSC, and PAL outputs.

This device, which works as your own personal jukebox that you can create playlists for, measures 17 x 3.5 x 14.5 inches and weighs 17 lbs.

Pricing and Availability

The AudioReQuest ARQ2 is currently available starting at $2950 for the 40 GB hard drive model.

(For access to more than 4,500 other hands-on product reviews on all variety of wired and wireless appliance and consumer devices, go to the iAppliance Web Portal Page. )