Iomega's 500GB ScreenPlay HD multimedia drive touts HDMI

As the multimedia hard drive market continues to quietly swell in the shadows, recently-acquired Iomega is making sure it keeps pace with the competition by giving its long-standing ScreenPlay HD a few attractive extras. The unit has certainly come a long ways since its 60GB days, now packing a full half-terabyte of space, an HDMI port and component / composite connections to boot. Furthermore, the drive understands WAV, WMA, MPEG-1/2/4, MP3, OGG, AC3, AVI, DivX, XviD and JPEG file formats, upconverts SD content to 720p / 1080i and even comes bundled with a remote to keep your hindquarters firmly planted. Not too shabby for $218.45, but just make sure you've got a place laid out to hide this thing from straying eyes.

[Via EverythingUSB]

[substance90 @ Apr 9th 2008 2:06PM]

It seems that they have left out the most popular HD format out there - matroska. I`ll stick with my Tvix + 400Gig Samsung HDD.

[Tonicboy @ Apr 9th 2008 4:06PM]

Tvix, huh? I've been looking for a non-computer based MKV playback solution. So how do you like it? Any issues I should know about? Does it support subtitles?

[substance90 @ Apr 9th 2008 4:23PM]

Yup, both latin and cyrillic subtitles :) I love it, I play almost only h.264 in a mkv container and 95% of the files play great, there are some that are not encoded in a standard way and they make a few problems, but most files run great.

[Lor @ Apr 9th 2008 4:52PM]

Also take a look at the popcorn hour it also supports MKV files. It might take some time to get it but its a really nice player with lots of supported file formats and constantly updated firmware.

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/


ps these two are almost identical to the popcorn hour (same hardware inside)
http://www.hdx1080.com/
https://www.istarhd.com/order/index.asp

[eddiep @ Apr 9th 2008 2:18PM]

Awesome. I have stock in Iomega.

[Rob @ Apr 9th 2008 2:21PM]

They only got a few pennies over the stock price. So, hopefully you own more than a couple of shares.

[eddiep @ Apr 9th 2008 2:35PM]

Oh, I'm well aware of EMC's takeover price. I lost money :) Hopefully this will boost the price enough to offset the loss.

[retro77 @ Apr 9th 2008 2:18PM]

Didn't they just get bought out by EMC?

[Neeko @ Apr 9th 2008 2:20PM]

This is just what i was looking for.. Ive gotten so used to my xboX360 as my media player though. This would be great to add to my other TV so my GF can watch her craptastic chick flix in the bedroom.

And to the next doucebag who has a smart ass comment...No she wont blend,, yes she can play doom..and "thats what she said"

[Rob @ Apr 9th 2008 2:23PM]

lol .... You got all your bases covered. I agree though, it'd be a great addition for another room. Keeping in mind the size of it, it should fit just about anywhere. I hope it won't be too noisy too.

[atrain @ Apr 9th 2008 2:46PM]

Does she fit in a manila envelope?

[Mike @ Apr 9th 2008 3:01PM]

But will she play Crysis?

She's an obvious i-phone rip-off.

Sorry, I had to.

Mike

[KYDS3K @ Apr 9th 2008 3:13PM]

@Rob: are you talking about Neeko's girlfriend?

[Edward @ Apr 9th 2008 2:24PM]

Hi,
Personally I hate the MKV format. I believe that the Tvix device is one of the few that plays MKV. Even on the computer with all of the MKV craptacular stuff installed, it still takes a lot of resources to play.
Lately I have been downloading only MKV's, then I extract the video/audio stream and put it into one of the other containers, mainly I use the vob container, that way the PS3 plays it and I can easily convert it to a dvd. The whole extraction takes less than 10 minutes, so no, I am not re-encoding the video.
So, for the price of your Tvix + HD thingy, I have 160 gb PS3, a blue ray player and an external 40gb drive.

-Edward

[phanbouy @ Apr 9th 2008 2:35PM]

how should the container type affect resource usage? wouldn't that be bitrates and underlying codecs?

[KYDS3K @ Apr 9th 2008 3:14PM]

what are you using to do all of that? details, please =)

[phanbouy @ Apr 9th 2008 3:35PM]

Eddie baby,

No one's suggesting you reencode anything, but it is useful to observe the bitrates (VLC and media player classic can show you the bitrate in info screens) because, at least on my rig, it starts crapping on itself once it gets above 7,000 kbps.

.mkv is just a container... i doubt putting them into a different container (VOC, etc) would enhance playback is all i'm thinking. mkv is a very convenient container.

[Edward @ Apr 9th 2008 3:32PM]

Hi,
I installed the CCCP codec pack, and it plays the MKV files with extremely high resource usage.
As for the bitrates and all that other stuff, I can't be bothered with all of the setting.
I like to download and watch the movie, not put on my codec hat and deal with how the person who created this movie decided to encode it.

-Edward

[sarah marshall @ Apr 9th 2008 2:39PM]

Is this a standard drag and drop from my portable hd, or do I need to use some stupid proprietary thing?

[phanbouy @ Apr 9th 2008 2:50PM]

zuh?

[Amit @ Jun 15th 2008 3:50PM]

Yes, it has a drag and drop option. When you connect to your computer's USB port, you will see it as any other external drive.

[Neeko @ Apr 9th 2008 2:39PM]

Iam looking for a reason not to just buy this thing now. Cant seem to find many review on it yet..

[zamir.evan @ Apr 9th 2008 2:52PM]

This sounded really great at first - I've been wanting an external HDMI-equipped drive. However, I am skeptical. Taking a look at the website, it is not clear that the output would be "true" HD. It says it upconverts to 720p/1080i, but does not say whether it will play material that is already at that resolution (or 1080p obviousl). Can anyone confirm that it indeed plays 1080i clips?

[BeyondtheTech @ Apr 9th 2008 2:49PM]

Looks similar to the one I saw on Geeks.com New Arrivals today, but no HDMI port. It may be its younger brother or a rebadge with an upgrade that'll probably be out soon.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MH720&cat=CAS&cpc=JAD

[Matthew @ Apr 9th 2008 3:10PM]

No h.264 = deal breaker.

[Edward @ Apr 9th 2008 3:27PM]

Hi,
I bought a 40gb PS3, a 160gb Sata HD ($80), a nice enclosure ($30).
Its really easy to swap drives in the ps3, does not void warranty. There are utube vids on how to do this.
My biggest problem was that the PS3 would not recognize the drive until I formatted to FAT32, so only 32gb usable and files no larger than 4gb.
Also download mkv2vob: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=131782
Now any mkv file that you download, run it through this application, I choose vob, but there are other containers that should work with the PS3 and or XBOX 360 [I have both]. Make sure that in the options tab you have selected to split files to FAT32 format.
Once its done, copy those to your external hd and enjoy on the ps3.
Easy as pie.
Also, take a look at Tversity, a free media server, fully compatible with 360, ps3, psp and a whole lot more.

-Enjoy

[AJ in the East Bay @ Apr 9th 2008 3:54PM]

I tried to go to Iomega's website to get more specs (if any), but the website is down due to an unspecified problem.

If the Screenplay doesn't support .ISO or .VOB, I'll have to pass.

[Jay @ Apr 9th 2008 4:17PM]

Didn't see anyting about .iso but it does handle .vob.

[Marty @ Apr 9th 2008 4:28PM]

It hurts to read that misuse of "tout."

[K-Canuck @ Apr 9th 2008 5:07PM]

I've had this one for a while now, but it sound like it's got an HDMI upgrade. I've got model SPMCA, whatever that means. It has component, composite, coax digital, scart, usb, and eSata (which nobody mentions, and which I can't test as I don't have any esata ports). Also 500GB, but I think there was a 320GB model as well. I haven't used it too much as a media player (the interface is kind of horrid), but a 500GB drive for a couple hundred with the ability to play files by itself is not bad. This one does 480i/480p/720p upconversion (no 1080i). Got it from Dell, but a look on their site shows the one with HDMI.

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/products/External_Hard_Drives/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&sku=A1559750

[Hyuukai @ Apr 9th 2008 8:40PM]

Seems pretty good, For some reason my PS3 doesn't seem to like half my legally aquired movies :P and really cannot be bothered to turn my PC on and use it as a media centre all the time

[G @ Apr 9th 2008 9:03PM]

if that had NAS and a torrent client, it'd be 100% perfect, but alas it doesnt.

*waits for popcorn hour*

nice machine by the looks of it though.

G

[sure bert @ Apr 9th 2008 9:51PM]

That remote looks like my 'fro pick.

[adam c @ Apr 10th 2008 10:04AM]

does anyone know of a hardware device that allows me to connect a usb drive and will upconvert my sd divx files to hd 1080i (so pretty much this device without a harddrive or any bit torrent items or any extras)

[Mr. B @ Apr 10th 2008 1:37PM]

This could be pretty cool, looks like they're trying so save money on the remote though.

[ehwwong @ Jun 4th 2008 10:51AM]

I brought the HDX 900 player which looks better than the iomega!