There is no shortage of media streamers for your living room, with AppleTV, Vudu, and the relatively new Netflix set-top box by Roku being some of the more popular. Iomega, already a player in this space, enters again with a novel product.
Unlike its ScreenPlay HD, which comes with a 500 GB drive, Iomega’s ScreenPlay TV Link includes no storage. It just allows users to attach ScreenPlay TV to a standard or high definition TV, then add storage from flash drives, external hard drives, or one of Iomega’s storage products via USB to play high quality movies, music, and photos anywhere in the house.
What makes the ScreenPlay TV Link intriguing is its size: The little box is 3.26 inches wide by 3.07 inches deep by .78 inches tall and comes with a credit card-sized remote. It can be slipped into a pocket or thrown into a bag for use at a friend’s house. Unlike other media streamers, ScreenPlay TV can be easily moved from the living room to the bedroom.
Its video connections include HDMI, component, and composite, and it includes a SCART adapter for use in international markets. Audio connections include composite RCA and coaxial S/PDIF. Supported media formats include MP3, AC3 (Dolby Digital Encoding), WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB), MPEG-4 (AVI, DiVX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x), and JPEG.
ScreenPlay TV is now available for $99 in the U.S., and will be available in Europe for 79 euros later in the month.
ScreenPlay TV is far from perfect, however. In a deal-breaker for some, users can choose 480p, 720p, and 1080i video settings, but 720p and 1080i are upscaled. And unless your content is on a flash drive or small portable hard drive, powered attached storage adds bulk, another piece of hardware to carry/move, and don’t forget the needed cables.
Still, if you’re like my cutting-edge video-hound brother, who is always experimenting with video downloading, different formats, and searching for compatible players, ScreenPlay TV might be a device worth trying.
I think this is Iomega’s third iteration of the product line. Like the earlier models and the killed Sandisk TakeTV it’ll fail. Either it’s too cumbersome or people don’t get it. The successes will be adding PC media playback to existing STBs like Xbox, TiVo, Verizon FiOS TV, etc.