New Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia 500GB Drive

Iomega Corporation announced the new Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive, a portable external hard drive that leaves the PC behind, delivering multimedia content to high-definition televisions and home theater systems.

The Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive is a 500GB drive with the storage capacity to hold up to 2 million photos, 9,250 hours of music, or 750 hours of video, enabling family and friends to share high-resolution photos, music, and video clips in the comfort of the living room, without a computer.

"Today’s mainstream home entertainment products are entering the high-definition era, which presents a huge opportunity for media devices in the living room like the Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive," said Loren Bryner, ScreenPlay product manager, Iomega Corporation. "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 portable ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive comes with a remote control for easy navigation and includes both HDMI and component video outputs for displaying high-resolution digital photos and video.

"We took everything we learned from previous ScreenPlay products and created a better media-sharing tool that’s right on for today’s multi-media sharing experience," continued Bryner. "The new ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive is an intuitive, easy-to-use solution that not only makes it easier to enjoy all kinds of digital content but also facilitates moving and playing content from one display or location to another."

Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive Technical Description
The ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive 500GB weighs 2 pounds and measures a diminutive 7.7" x 2.3" x 5", or about the size of a paperback book.

Inside the ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive is a 500GB 3.5 inch 7200 RPM hard drive formatted with the NTFS file system. Video connection options include HDMI, component and composite video, and SCART (RGB). Audio connection options include composite RCA and coaxial S/PDIF outputs. PC transfers use the USB 2.0 interface. USB, composite video, and component video cables are included.

Using the HDMI or component outputs, the user can choose video settings from 480i/480p/720p/1080i (720p and 1080i are achieved through upscaling). Supported media formats include MP3, AC3 (Dolby(R) Digital Encoding), WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB), MPEG-4 (AVI/DiVX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x/XViD) and JPEG.

System Requirements
The Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive is designed for use with the following PC operating systems: Microsoft Windows(R) 2000 Professional, XP Home/XP Professional/XP Professional x64, Windows Vista.

Availability and price
The Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive USB 2.0/AV 500GB is now available in the Americas for $209.95. (Price is U.S. suggested retail.) The Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive is expected to be available in international markets in late May for Euro 179.99.

Iomega Corporation