$350 is a hard budget for a good front end. If you could double it...then you'll get somewhere.
I gotta start somewhere. Realistically, I can make due with my dvd player if I must, but I'll probably get either the Denon or Pioneer DVD players that have the Burr Brown DAC's. I'd love to go disc-less, but I think it's going to take some research on my part & more $$$ than I'm looking to spend right off the bat.
I think you'd be surprised. If you're going to go diskless eventually, you might want to consider just doing so now, as you could just be wasting money on a player you won't be using when you go diskless (not to mention, burning disks you aren't going to use...)
I've got 2 320gb drives ($99/each at Best Buy) in which I set up exactly what brian links to above - the redundancy without RAID. I'm running it in a 1ghz machine that I got from my work for free, but 1ghz machines can be had used on ebay for SUPER cheap... like $50. If you've got a network already, just throw that machine on it, and share the drives. SB3 for $300, and you into it for not too much more than $350. Of course, if you have to install a network, that would increase the price a bit, but not more than $100, I'd imagine. If you consider that you might be dumping a lot of money on a player, just to then switch to an SB3 a bit later, you'll be better financially in teh long run to just go with the SB3.
Also, don't know if you noticed, but the SB3 has the Brown Burrs.
I went diskless in November, and I've been loving it ever since. And I loved using CDs. When I'm watching sports (which I do all the time), I just use EAC to rip my cds to FLAC, tag them, make an album playlist, and then move them to the main large HD. Slim server automatically updates at midnight, so its available rather quickly on Slimserver. Then, it copies over to the second drive at around 3am.
I'd recommend setting up slimserver, even if you don't have an SB3. That'll give you an idea of just how cool it could be. Having the ability to stream my whole collection (as decent quality Mp3s, which are encoded from the flacs on the fly using the lame decoder) totally rules.