The Philips WACS series of audio players and streamers has proven quite popular as a stylish and innovative way of sharing your digital music around the home. Far be it for Sony to be caught short in an established market, and in its new GIGA JUKE NAS-E35HD & NAS-SC55PKE hard disk drive hi-fi systems it seems to have produced a worthy rival.

They offer a similar array of features to the Philips units, including storage for up to 40,000 tracks, the ability to rip CDs directly to the internal drive, create themed playlists and transfer tracks directly to other portable devices. You can automatically label your tracks from a built-in database and stream music wirelessly to up to five client players (one of which is included) situated in different rooms in the home.

There's also a 4.3-inch colour display, which trumps the rather bland monochrome number on Philips' alternative, and you have the ability to play music either individually or collectively on each terminal through the 100W built-in speakers.

There's no information on price or availability yet but we'd expect them to be priced similarly to the Philips WACS system, which costs around £500.