Suhit Gupta
11-18-2005, 05:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.designtechnica.com/article8824.html' target='_blank'>http://news.designtechnica.com/article8824.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Iomega Corporation today announced a new external hard drive unit which they feel is well suited towards multimedia uses. The 60GB ScreenPlay Multimedia Drive is available now for $219.95. Chief among the features of this USB 2.0 external hard drive is built-in multimedia playback capability through a TV or A/V system via its audio and video outputs. A set of DVD-style playback buttons and on-screen TV navigation helps users select a video, song list, or slide show to play. A wireless remote is included to help control the ScreenPlay’s functions. Supported media formats of this 5.2” x 3.07” x 0.7” hard drive include MPEG-1 (AVI, MPG, DAT), MPEG-2 (AVI, VOB), and MPEG-4 (AVI, XviD). It also can handle JPEG photos of up to 8 megapixel resolution, motion JPEG files at 15 or 30 frames per second (digital camera movies), and MP3 digital audio files."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/iomega.jpg" /><br /><br />Does anyone else get the feeling that this is a ripoff? 60GB is quite small for the applications listed IMHO. So I guess we are basically paying that premium for the multimedia features. Now, I am not going to need those features when the drive is connected to a computer, so it would only be useful when connected to a TV. But I have noticed that some TVs offer these features already. Hmm, I don't know whether this will sell too well.