19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Like many Iomega products -- good, but not perfect, August 12, 2008
This review is from: Iomega 34386 ScreenPlay TV Link (Personal Computers)
This gadget lets you connect, in theory, a portable hard drive or flash drive to a TV or projector. Unlike other similar devices, including those by Iomega, it does NOT come with any on-board storage -- you plug your own storage device into the USB drive.
On the plus side, it's tiny, lightweight, and only requires a lightweight power supply and the desired AV cable (component, composite or HDMI). It has a configurable menu that lets you choose PAL/NTSC; widescreen, 4:3 letterbox or 4:3, and a variety of audio options.
When you turn it on and plug in a compatible hard drive, it displays the content in the same folders that you have on the disc. You can also rip a DVD (I tried with a homemade disc), and when you click on that folder, it will read it just like a DVD and display the menus. I also successfully played xvid and mp3 files. For travel, it will be great to just bring this device and a tiny portable hard drive instead of a DVD player and a bunch of discs. It comes with a miniremote that seems to work well.
The device worked successfully with a Toshiba 320 gig portable HD, but only one of the three properly formatted (FAT32 or NTFS) thumb drives I tried. The device failed to recognize the other two. So beware -- it does not work with every type of portable media. Maybe Iomega can fix this with a firmware update... but that leads to my next point.
As of this writing (12 Aug 2008), despite the statements in the "getting started" flyer included in the package, there is no user manual or support page for this device ANYWHERE on the Iomega web site that I can find. And I've looked and looked. All the searches at Iomega either lead to the sales page or support pages for its TV Link devices with an integrated hard drive. A search by serial number on their support page leads you to an old mp3 player. This is incredibly clumsy on Iomega's part, but not unusual given my past experiences with them. (If anyone finds a support page, please leave a note with a link in the product's forum here -- I'd really appreciate it.)
Overall, this product has a lot of upsides, but as is typical with Iomega, it falls a little bit short. This is nothing Iomega couldn't fix with a little effort, and I'll be glad to eat my words if they get their act together with respect to 1) flash drive compatibility and 2) product support.
Edited to add, 26 August: Since I posted this, Iomega has added a support page for this device, and they also contacted me as a result of this review to try to resolve the flash drive incompatibility that I experienced. I give them full credit for being responsive to their customers.
Edited to add, 30 December: I'm still pleased with this unit. I've taken it on several trips, and it's great to be able to watch what you want in a hotel room. (It works in any hotel with a tv that has accessible composite or component inputs.) The upscaling is great -- even on an HDTV, plain old divx/xvid files look great. I use it almost exclusively with a portable 320 gig western digital drive, and the unit always finds the drive without problem. All in all, for the price, this is a great unit.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Sniff sniff, December 20, 2008
This review is from: Iomega 34386 ScreenPlay TV Link (Personal Computers)
I heard about this from a WD media player review and bought this because it is cheaper. It played 1 out of 10 movies I tried (mp4 and avi). I was too busy to return, so I lost. The WD has played over 100 movies without one failure. So it would take at least 100 of these to equal one WD.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply the best gadged I've ever owned!, January 20, 2009
This review is from: Iomega 34386 ScreenPlay TV Link (Personal Computers)
Tested with 160GB, 320GB and 500GB WD passport drives, and all of them worked perfectly. This is a great product overall.
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