News

posted on 19 May 2008 12:11

Iomega's new portable ScreenPlay hard drive can stream movies to a TV on its own without needing a linked PC to run the playing software.

The ScreenPlay HD Multimedia drive contains a 500GB, 3.5-inch hard disk drive spinning at 7,200rpm. It is formatted with the NTFS file system. A USB 2.0 link connects it as external storage to a Windows PC through which it can be loaded with multimedia files. It can store up to 2 million photos, 9,250 hours of music, or 750 hours of video - 720 x 480 MPEG 2 video at 11MB/min.

The ScreenPlay has several video connection options including HDMI, component and composite video, and SCART (RGB) to link to a high definition TV or home theatre system. Audio connection options include composite RCA and coaxial S/PDIF outputs.
 
Using the HDMI or component outputs, the user can choose video settings from 480i/480p/720p/1080i (720p and1080i are achieved through upscaling). Supported media formats include MP3, AC3 (Dolby Digital Encoding), WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB), MPEG-4 (AVI/DiVX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x/XViD) and JPEG.

The drive has its own remote control for operating multi-media material distribution to a TV.

Fredric-Olivier Laurent, Iomega International's ScreenPlay product manager, said: “The ScreenPlay Drive is a great solution for Windows users – there’s no better way to leverage a big-screen LCD or plasma TV investment. The combination of ScreenPlay and today’s televisions give users a seamless way to show off family photos, play music, and enjoy their videos from the best seat in the house.”

The ScreenPlay weighs 907 g and measures 196 x 58 x 127mm, or about the size of a paperback book. It's priced at £149.99 in international markets, or $199.45 in the USA.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}