The Missing Feature: Digital Steaming Audio (and video) to my A/V Receiver

I just completed the exercise of taking our family's entire CD collection and moving it to my new ReadyNAS Duo (networked attached storage) at the house. I now have our complete physical music library digitized and on-line. The ReadyNAS has a built-in iTunes server that will deliver the entire library to any iTunes client on demand.

Problem is ... the only iTunes clients I have are iTunes itself. Which means that I need a laptop (or a desktop system) connected to my A/V receiver to play any of this great music. I have so many items attached to my receiver that one more (along with a remote) is too much.

So why doesn't my receiver have a built-in iTunes client so that I can stream audio and video without the use of a computer?

I found a few workarounds that I will cover in my next post ... but I'm still in search of the perfect solution.