Iomega beefs up ScreenPlay range with 1T HD model

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 12 March 2009 10:49

Your IT - Entertainment

Hard drives that connect directly to a TV and other home entertainment gear for media playback are becoming increasingly common. The ScreenPlay Pro HD is Iomega's latest entry.

The growing amount of digital content in the typical household means it makes sense to provide shared storage, and even more sense for the storage device to connect to the TV and the rest of your entertainment equipment.

For example, You don't want multiple copies of the music you bought clogging up the drives of every computer in the house just so you can choose where to play it back, and just because you recorded a show on the computer in the study, you might want to watch it on the lounge room TV without having to mess around burning a DVD.

That's where products like Iomega's ScreenPlay Pro HD Multimedia Drive come in.

It's a 1T network drive (only 10/100 Ethernet, which is a shortcoming given that Gigabit Ethernet is becoming standard even on consumer PCs; there is also provision for a Wi-Fi dongle) that can also be connected via USB 2.0.

Storage can be expanded by attaching an external USB 2.0 drive.

One downside is that the ScreenPlay Pro HD is only intended for use with Windows PCs.

The unit features video connections via HDMI, component and composite, with audio tracks available via conventional RCA connectors or S/PDIF.

Supported formats include MP3, AC3, DTS, PCM, AAC, WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (HL/ML), MPEG-4 (AVI/DiVX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x/XViD), mov, iso, vob, mp4, mkv, JPEG, and BMP - taking care of most of the common choices for audio, video and still photos.

480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i are all supported.

"With the Iomega ScreenPlay Pro HD Multimedia Drive, consumers can make the most of the video, photos, and music on the home network and enjoy them in their living room in all their high definition glory," said Loren Bryner, global product manager, Iomega Corporation.

"Now that mainstream home entertainment products have gone high-def, the ScreenPlay Pro HD Multimedia drive lets consumers leverage that investment. With this multimedia drive attached to a home theatre system, it becomes as easy to browse the home network for viewable content as it is to put in a DVD."