Maggie's Farm

That IS one way of accomplishing what you want, but it pays to learn more. For example, do you have a high-end HDTV of recent vintage? (or is such a device in your near-term future?) If so, it might be a better overall value to get yourself an Apple TV box instead. The Apple TV will route your music to your TV, where presumably your sound system is/will be hooked up. In that sense, it does what the Squeezebox does. But it also does more.

The Apple TV will take you to the iTunes store, via a much larger interface (i.e., your TV). It will also find and play YouTube videos (whose resolution are being improved, BTW). It will find and display Flickr images. And if you know the right techy-type, he can show you how to actually cruise web pages using your Apple TV as well. (This requires installation of an 'outside', free software program.)

Apple TV works on older TVs as well. But an older TV might not have the audio capabilities of a newer TV. (This is entirely dependent on more factors than I want to get into here.) My Toshiba, for example, has optical sound output and THX built-in. (I got it on Amazon for a thousand dollars a few months ago - they can be had for even less now.) So the transmission from an iTunes radio station through the Apple TV box to the TV to the speakers can be about as pure as it gets. (All depends, of course, on the encoding and bandwidth employed by your friendly internet station.)

Apple and other manufacturers sell other devices to move your iTunes stream through to your stereo, as well. But for a competitive price, Apple TV does the job, and it does other jobs besides. The device requires little more than a source of power and a WiFi or wired internet connection. The setup is nearly all in iTunes, and you were going to have to do at least that with any device.

Just FYI.

I have no problem with a TV-free house. But if you have not had a TV in a while, I can only tell you that a TV isn't what it was. A TV today is a giant canvas on which you can display anything you wish (vacation trips, family video, music with or without video accompaniment, Wii games, etc.). What it WAS - a hateful funnel through which consumers were force-fed messages chosen by a handful of people - is long past. That's why certain TV institutions, like the Evening News Anchor, are dying out.

There will always be people who prefer poison, of course, so there will always be garbage on TV. But there are worthwhile uses for the thing as well.

Anyway, OK. No TV. I'll go 'way now.