Not only a 60 GB portable drive, Iomega's new ScreenPlay Multimedia Drive connects to TVs for showing pictures, listening to music and playing back video in several formats.
Introducing its first media-enabled portable hard drive, Iomega has announced the ScreenPlay Multimedia Drive, merging 60 GB of storage with the ability to connect to TVs for playback of content stored on the drive. At a petite 132 x 77 x 18 mm, the device relies on a TV-driven interface and infrared remote control to serve up pictures, audio and video in a multitude of formats.
Equipped with Composite and S-Video connectors as well as analog RCA stereo plugs, the ScreenPlay supports both NTSC and PAL formats. USB 2.0 is present for high-speed data connectivity, with the drive mounting as a mass storage compliant device when connected to a compatible PC.
The number of formats supported by the Iomega ScreenPlay is not among the most extensive, as evidenced by the lack of support for Windows Media formats of any kind. Still, the drive supports MP3 and AC3 formats for audio; up to 8 Megapixel JPEGs for pictures; and several video formats including MPEG1 in AVI, MPG and DAT containers; MPEG2 in AVI and VOB containers; and MPEG4 including XviD in AVI containers.
Avoiding legal keruffles, Iomega has chosen not to include software capable of converting or ripping media, be it from audio or video sources, to the ScreenPlay. Still, the player belongs to an extremely rare breed of devices supporting the playback of MPEG2 video in VOB containers - the format of choice for DVDs. Although the practice of extracting such files from DVDs is deemed illegal in the US, it is allowed in a number of markets worldwide, considerably increasing the appeal of the ScreenPlay to video afficionados.
Now available in the US for a suggested retail price of $220 USD, the expected availability of the Iomega ScreenPlay Multimedia Drive in markets worldwide is not currently known.
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