Use WDTV LIVE as a Music Jukebox

WDTV Live's USB input allows playback of media files from an external hard drives. I am not sure whether the USB input has an onboard DAC chip or not, but I use it to read my WAVs from my baffolo external drive and bypass them completely to my Yamaha 665 via HDMI for decoding.(correction-WDTV does not support bypass---files are still decoded by its internal decoder) 


I have tried both sound output modes under the WDTV LIVE, i.e. Stereo (music decoded by WDTV LIVE itself) and Digital (music bypassed and decoded by receiver), I found that the sound quality is about the same. (correction - not correct)


You can do the same stuff by using a CD Player with a USB port, e.g. Marantz SA8003. According to http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0109/marantz_sa8003.htm, its USB input is powered by an NEC uPD63901 microcontroller, and it enables the SA8003 to play MP3, WAV, WMA and AAC files directly off a USB hard drive, pen drive, or iPod but the uPD63901 does its own D/A conversion, so files read from the USB input completely bypass Marantz' excellent CS4398-based digital section (and cannot be output via the Marantz digital outputs). Then this does not make sense to me, so I stick to a cheap WDTV LIVE solution for a Music Jukebox.