AirTunes Like Network Audio Solution?

I am just wondering if anyone out there knows about a Mac compatible network audio solution similar to AirTunes via the Airport Express but cheaper, simpler, and wired?

Currently my wired/wireless router (a very old and faithful LinkSys WRT54G) sits about 3 feet from where I want the audio to play so an Airport Express wouldn't do me much good other than the AirTunes feature (and it doesn't feature enough wired ports to replace my current router). I was hoping Apple might add an audio out to the next revision of the Airport Extreme Base Station but they just revised it and I haven't heard anything about it featuring this. Seems like an obvious addition to me since the second most common place for a router after an office seems to be near a home theater.

I use Sonos which is Mac compatible, but definitely not cheaper! Not very helpful I know, but I am a huge Sonos fan.

Yea the Sonos looks cool but very expensive and overkill. Sadly the Airport Express appears to be the most cost effective solution out there.

Guess I could double task it to add 802.11n to my current network. Set my n devices o connect to it and my g devices to connect to the WRT54G like they currently do and connect the two routers to each other via ethernet. Not even sure if something like this is even doable with the Airport Express though.

Not sure about the Linksys. I am doing WDS with an Extreme and an Express and it works pretty slick.

WDS would kind of defeat the purpose of getting an Express to add 802.11n to my network though (was considering that for speed reasons not range reasons). Of course since the WRT54G only has 100Mb Ethernet I still wouldn't be getting much of an enhancement to my network speed. This is why I was hoping the AirTunes features would be added to the revised AEBS, I could have killed two birds with one stone. Oh well.