Iomega launch direct-to-TV hard drives

Iomega has launched a new range of hard drive based devices that will allow you to bring digital content to any TV or A/V system without being connected to a computer

15 November 2005 11:50 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Iomega has launched a new range of hard drive based devices that will allow you to bring digital content to any TV or A/V system without being connected to a computer.

Called the Iomega ScreenPlay Multimedia Drives, the new group of HDD based products will have built-in multimedia playback capability, making them digital media jukeboxes for photos, songs and video files that can be used with virtually any television or audio-video system in the world.

There will be three players in the range initially - the ScreenPlay Pro (200GB & 300GB) and The Pocket-Sized Screenplay (60GB) Multimedia Drives.

All three units are capable of offering support for MPEG-1 (AVI, MPG, DAT), MPEG-2 (AVI, VOB), and MPEG-4 (AVI, XviD). ISO, DivX, DivXVOD, OGG Vorbis, WMA, WAV formats.

The ScreenPlay Pro boasts up to 300GB capacity capable of holding a whopping 1,200,000 photos, or 450 hours of DVD-quality video, or 5,550 hours of music.
additional FireWire connection, high definition video output (up to 1920x1080i or 1280x720p) and digital sound.

The drives use on-screen TV navigation to help users select a video, song list, or slide show via the included remote control.

A USB 2.0 port (and an additional FireWire port for the Screenplay Pro) enable fast data transfer with a computer at hard-drive speeds; media outputs include NTSC or PAL analog video (using composite or S-Video connectors) and analog stereo audio (using RCA connectors).

The Iomega ScreenPlay Multimedia drives will be available today with suggested retail prices of £219.99 (ScreenPlay™ PRO 200GB), £239.99 (ScreenPlay™ PRO 300GB) and £154.99 (ScreenPlay™ 60GB).