Customer Reviews

Iomega ScreenPlay Plus HD Multimedia Player 1 TB - 34499

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I know that I shouldn't be disappointed by a unit that does exactly what it's supposed to do, but I can't help feeling that this player is just too limited to deserve a recommendation. It's a little slow, which is not a huge problem, and the interface is very simple, which is both good and bad in that it's easy to use but feels archaic. The real issue is that it doesn't support very many video file formats. (It plays audio files and displays images just fine.) It supports MPEG-1, 2, and 4, and some DivX and Xvid formats, but the specific codecs supported are a bit of a mystery. I downloaded a movie trailer -- that worked. I downloaded a .m4v (MPEG-4) episode of a web series -- "Invalid file." I tried an .AVI of a video I took with my camcorder about 4 years ago -- "invalid file." I have over 30 years of computer experience and some good video-editing software, so I could probably work around this by re-encoding the videos, but that's a lot to ask of the average consumer, which is the likely target market for this sort of product.

Again, it's extremely easy to use, and it handles all standard audio and image file types. You plug the USB cord into your PC, and the computer sees a new hard drive. Copy over the files, stop the device, and plug it into your home theater or TV. Fire it up, and select what you want with the remote. Then hope that you don't get that dreaded "Invalid file" message. If you want to use it as a music or picture server for your home theater, it'll work fine. But for video it can be a hassle. Including a wider range of video decoders would have made this a very nice product. Maybe it's best to wait for the next generation of ScreenPlay and hope that it's more versatile.

I got this item while testing several of these devices for a friend on a budget. Of all the items we tried out for my friend, the Iomega Screenplay rates just about the lowest in every category. Unfortunately, this isn't a product that was quite ready for public consumption yet.

On the plus side, set-up was relatively simple. The device connects, as advertised, to your tv through a variety of connections. We were pleased to see an HDMI slot, which many media players skip. Likewise, connecting a USB device to the Screenplay was simple, as was connecting the screenplay to my computer for file transfer. The positive notes end here.

Upon booting up, we were disappointed with the Screenplay's primitive and unintuitive menu system. The options are few - for the most part the device simply displays the file names of movies, music and photos on any attached drives. There is no tagging, nor are there any thumbnails. Those who meticulously name their files (like I do) will be rewarded, those who name their files in a similar fashion to how iTunes tags them (as my friend does) will find themselves lost in a maze of files.

The second major issue came when we discovered how limited the file playing codec was. The device WOULD NOT play our m4v files, nor would it play our mp4 files. Since this is primarily what we needed it for, the Screenplay was given a major demerit. In fact, of the eight file types we tried to play, we found the Screenplay capable of handling only three of them. This is simply unacceptable on a device at this price point - we felt if we shelled out this much, it should play anything Qicktime is capable of playing.


File playback quality was limited and jerky on the files it could access, and the audio quality was subpar. We found the device to frequently freeze for several seconds when we came out of fast forward, but this wasn't nearly as annoying as the substandard image quality we got out of it.

The only really nice thing we had to say about the screenplay was that it came with an internal 1 TB drive, which really beats the competition in terms of size. Most of the other media players had no storage at all, so they required buying a separate drive. However, 1 TB drives only cost around $60, and since this device is $60 more than the other devices, there's no tremendous value to the internal drive other than the convenience.

For those who want a serious media device, the Apple TV is still the best in terms of features and capabilities. For those who want to steer clear of Apple and its generally high prices, we liked the Western Digital HD TV Media Player much better than this one. While the Western Digital was also a little quirky with our m4v files, it still played them and looked much better than the Screenplay.

Let me say upfront that my needs and motivations for the Screenplay Media Player are probably a bit different from many users -- I was not really interested in the ability to play back movies or DVDs since I have a ROKU box which allows streaming of movies directly from Netflix and Amazon. I do not shoot movies so playing back home videos was not a priority.

So why do I love this device? Music! I have a very LARGE CD collection -- my husband has a huge collection of "modern music" and I have a large collection of classical music. I wanted a way to play our collection through our main stereo system without having to feed a CD player or pick and choose which play lists on an IPOD.

First, a bit of background about our home theater system (since that cause some readers confusion):

We are not playing the music through the TV -- we don't even play the TV through the TV. We run the audio portion of the TV and other video components through an Acurus home theater pre-amp, Marantz monoblocks which are driving Newform Ribbon speakers and a transmission-line sub-woofer in order to achieve full sound quality -- which using to play MP3s is a bit of overkill.

I had the Philips NP2500/37 WiFi Internet Radio Network Music Player with Rhapsody (Black) which would play my collection that was sitting on my computer. However, there were a couple of things I wasn't wild about the Philips solution. First, Philips only really supports MP3 which is a lossy format. Since my music had been ripped to Lossless (or near Lossless format), I had to convert my collection to MP3 format into another folder in order to play back my collection via the Philips Music player. Second, the Philips requires that your computer be up and running (along with network connection and additional "server" software running on your computer in order for it to work). If I just wanted to playback the music but wasn't using my computer, I was out for luck.

So I was attracted to the Iomega Media Player as a way to solve the things I didn't like about the Philips solution and it is a much better solution for me. Things that I think are much better about this solution:

1. Since the iomega Media player is essentially a disk drive (and a BIG one at that!), you have a backup of all your media files. Very good!

2. Cost... TeraByte drive for one hundred fifty bucks! While there may be cheaper hard TB hard drives out there, they do not support the home theater playback that the Iomega system supports.

3. Ability to playback my library in any format I throw at it -- I don't have to convert to MP3 or sacrifice sound quality by going with a Lossy Format.

4. Once you have backed up your files, you don't have to worry about special software on your computer, having your computer running all the time, having a network connection going to the device.

5. Ability to view home pictures (jpgs) on the big screen... I have to admit that I didn't think I would really care about this feature. However, I remember when I was a kid, some of our best times as a family was when my dad would set up the slide projector and slide screen and go through old pictures. With the Media player, this is the modern day equivalent.

Things I'm not wild about:

1. The only way to transfer files from the computer to the hard drive is via a USB connection. So if you get a new CD that you want to add to your collection, you have to either disconnect the Media player from your system and bring it over to your computer, or you have to take your computer over to the media player.

2. As someone else pointed out, only one power supply despite the potential need to move the media player back and forth from the media center to your computer -- it would be nice to just unplug from one place and plug in near your computer or even have some battery life for short-term transfers.

All in all, I really like this system because it does what I want it to do -- play my music library without needing to make sure the computer, network, and server software are all functioning properly. It actually does more by creating a way to simulate "slide shows" that brings our family together for some good laughs and memories. I haven't really tried the video capabilities but really don't need that since video is really going more towards real-time streaming from sources like Amazon. And if you use it for nothing else, the price for a terabyte of hard disk space is phenomenal and worth the price of the device by itself.

[NCJVR]

This is an extremely easy to use, plug-and-play media player. It almost can't be simpler than this. But I'm going to have to dissent with the other reviews here and mention that there are limitations here in media playback.

GOOD POINTS
===========
+ Set up is very easy. Just connect the media player to your computer via a USB cable and connect its AC power adapter and you're ready to move photos, videos, and music from your computer. No installation CD is needed on your computer. The media player appears on your desktop like an external harddrive/ flash key. You can literally just drag and drop files onto it. It's that simple.

+ The package says it's Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2000 compatible. I'm guessing that this is only in reference to the free backup software that you can download from Iomega's website. I've connected this media player to a Mac (running OS X 10.5) and it works fine for dragging and dropping files. There's no reason why it wouldn't work with Windows 7 either.

+ The exterior is a stylish, black brushed aluminum shell. It also includes a plastic stand in case you want to stand up the media player vertically.

+ The remote control is decent. It has soft, rubber buttons. Batteries for the remote are included too.

+ To connect this to your TV, just use the included component cables or RCA cables to connect to your TV. This means it will work with any TV made in the last 15+ years. If you can connect a DVD player to it, your TV is compatible. If you have a newer TV, you may have a higher resolution HDMI port. This media player can connect via HDMI but there is no HDMI cable included in the package. You can buy a cheap HDMI cable on Amazon for under $10.

+ 1TB Storage size (Though in reality, only 930GB is available for storage. I wonder what happened to the remaining 70GB).

BAD POINTS
==========
This media player is more good than bad, which is why I've rated it 3/5 stars in this review. What's wrong with it?

- Minimal instructions. The instruction book is in dozens of languages. The English instructions is about 1 single page. It only covers connecting the media player to your computer and dragging and dropping files. It also covers connecting it the media player to your TV. But if you want to know more about operating the media player when it's connected to your TV, you're out of luck. You'll need to visit the Iomega website to download the rest of the instructions.

- I was disappointed with the media playback. A good portion of my photos looked horribly oversaturated. The photos look fine on my computer and also fine when accessed from my Playstation 3 which is also hooked up to my TV. It was also not able to play back MP4 (Mpeg-4) files even though the box said it would be able to. My PS3 can play back MP4 videos, but this media player can't. MP4 is the video format that my HD Sony camera uses to capture video. All I get is an "invalid file" error message.

- The remote control's buttons aren't great. If you are in a sub-menu/sub-folder and want to return back to the main menu so you can switch to a different media category (such as video, photos, music) then the MENU Button on the remote should take you there. After all, the MENU Button on a DVD remote does this. But that's not the case here. You need to press the unintuitive RETURN Button.

SUMMARY
=======
At $150, this is a decent media player provided your photos don't show up as oversaturated or if don't run into any video compatibility issues. You may also consider the media players made by Seagate. For an additional $150, you can get a Playstation 3 which has vastly superior media playback, faster access to your photos/videos/music, and the ability to play Blu-ray movies and PS3 games.

With a short list of supported codecs, Iomega has put yet another unimpressive media player on the market. While compact, quiet and roomy, it is hampered by a clunky interface and very limited video support, making for a better storage unit than a media player. Here's why:

It only supports MPEG-1 (a very old codec.. only good for VCD), MPEG-2 (DVD), and MPEG-4 Part 2 (DivX/XviD), making the device nearly useless for hi-def playback with more modern codecs. Most notably, it does not support MPEG-4 Part-10, a completely different (and confusingly named) codec, which also goes by "H.264" and "AVC" (Advanced Video Codec). Blu-rays, HD-DVD, and the overwhelming majority of hi-def content available today is encoded with this. All 720p/1080i/p .MKV's I've encountered use H.264, as do movie trailers and other downloadable content. H.264 requires more processing muscle than the ScreenPlay can muster, and unfortunately, all that the Iomega seems to be good for is standard definition content, as DivX and XviD are used predominantly for SD encodes.

VIDEO FORMAT TEST:
For this test, I copied a random sampling of 18 video files of various formats to the drive. Expectedly, no .MKV, .RM, and .WMV's showed up. However, since these are unsupported containers, I do not penalize. My standard def .MP4's failed to play as did a 720p .MOV trailer of "Where The Wild Things Are" as they were H.264. That left 5/20 files the ScreenPlay was able to play from my test library: several .AVI, .DIVX, and .MPG's.

On a brighter note, however, is full .IFO and VOB/ISO support, making the ScreenPlay one of a handful of major-brand players that support full DVD menus, chapters, and disc structuring. I tested a rip of MICHAEL JACKSON - IN JAPAN and it worked just like a DVD. This is good news for users wishing to create a centralized DVD library to take with them. 1TB will fit about 200 single layered DVD's.

EXTERNAL SUBTITLE SUPPORT:
It works, but rather clumsily. If the device detects external files, it will display a selection dialog listing the available subs before playing the movie. To help identify which is which, I suggest naming the subtitle files the same as the movie, add a dash, then the language name. If your movie is named "Batman.avi", your subtitle file should be named "Batman - ENG.srt", "Batman - FRENCH.srt", etc. I saved a simplified Chinese subtitle as UTF-8 and it worked perfectly. A Japanese subtitle I re-saved as UTF-8 failed, showing garbled characters. I re-downloaded it and it worked fine, so for Japanese, it has to be Shift-JIS. You can get additional subtitles from DivxStation. The Screenplay supports Arabic and Hebrew as well as some other non-Western languages.

Problem is, when a movie is playing, it is impossible to switch to another subtitle. You can only turn the subtitle on or off. What you chose at the beginning is what you're stuck with. If you want a different sub, you have to stop the movie and start it up again from the beginning. The ScreenPlay does not have a resume function, and combined with bad fast-forwarding buttons, this can be quite frustrating. You can jump forward/backward by 30-second increments by pushing right or left. Or you can seek by up to 16x by pushing fast-forward/rewind. 30 second increments is too small and fast-forwarding can take a long time to get to the right scene if you've left off somewhere in the middle of a movie.

PHOTO TEST:
.JPGs tested were resized to fit the screen and downsampling didn't look as good as I expected, looking a bit over-exposed and gamma-shifted. There's no zoom in/out function. Oddly, pushing left and right rotates the image. To advance to the next or previous photo, you have to push up or down. You can set a slideshow to music for presentations.

AUDIO TEST:
All .mp3s and m4a (MPEG-4 audio) I tested worked fine, although the ScreenPlay will only show the file name of the currently playing song, not any of the info contained in the ID3 metadata (like Artist, Year, Genre, Album Name, Track Number, etc.) The only thing you get is the name of the currently playing file and the timer. To get ID3 info, you have to explicitly select the song and then push the Info button on the remote, which will pop up a box.

To add songs to the playlist, you select the pushpin button to tag them. When done, push the Menu button to add them to the Quick List. Lastly, there is no way to fast-forward through a song. It's all or nothing.

SLOW INTERFACE AND ANNOYANCES:
The interface can be changed to any one of 11 languages (English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Dutch, and Russian) so the device is handy for those living in multilingual households. But it is very slow and clunky. Nearly every button push caused the spinning dial to appear, a problem that also plagued the NETGEAR Digital Entertainer Live (Black). File listings took a second or two to display as the device read the drive. Invoking a popup menu and closing it again causes the device to have to re-read the directory and re-draw the screen. I suspect the device doesn't store anything in RAM (or has no RAM). Even with just a handful of files (less than 20), the delay is noticeable. I can only imagine how bad it might be if I had 500.

Lastly, I want to mention that I could not change the output mode from Composite to HDMI, even though I was plugged in with HDMI to a 1080i TV. The only option shown was Composite.

FINAL WORDS:
The Screenplay Plus is a decent hard drive (internally a Samsung 1 TB SATA II Hard Drive), but I'm sad to say it's a mediocre player at best. It's under-powered and severely limited in the codecs it can play. It's adequate if you just want to build a DVD library or play back older SD files, but without H.264 support, it is a technology dead-end as far as hi-def content is concerned.

For much more playback flexibility (and a faster, more attractive, and more responsive interface), you may wish to consider the popular Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player, Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player WDBAAN0000NBK-NESN; or the ASUS O!Play - TV HD Media Player (Black).

There was no information telling me that this hard drive would not support certain codec formats and I have several movies that will not play. This information should be in the advertisement.

Sometimes I wonder if the companies that make these horrible devices..... pay people to write comments and reviews, to recover the money they could possibly lose. I am computer litterate,but no expert, and thought this would be a great way to begin my networking/ media venture. Unfortunately,I have spent more time trying to find video format changers, and applications to make my 3TB's of movies and music work with out to many glitches.
After all of this fooling around with all of that, I have such a mess of folders.. I.e Try one/ app #1 ... try 2/application 331 .lol and such.. I have finally come to grips with the fact that this unit is worthless.... and If you ever think your going to chill out on the recliner play videos that you just downloaded.. wrong answer... you have to get up .... go turn the unit off on the back switch.. (not the remote control off button).... then upload it..... go back and hit that button again... and finally sit down and play the media, hoping you did it right .. because there is no lights to tell you if it is connnected still to your computer or not...... because it will not display anything on your TV if it is... sooo with the 3 minute reboots.. the Very sluggish browsing/ function speeds then holding your breath hoping it will play... (video) Then have at it .... I would have a movie up and running quicker, by running to a dump, digging out a VCR then renting a movie, than fooling with this piece of GARBAGE !!

This is my second media drive form Iomega, the first one was the previous generation and it was not only half of the storage, but the performance and interface was so much worse!

I'm really using this media drive all the time to watch downloaded from internet movies

Recently I found out, that I don't have to unplug it from TV to download the next movie - I'm doing it from USB thumbdrive, that is portable, you just download what you want fron computer and then - plug into the media drive directly!
There is a functiion -to copy files from the USB drive to the Iomega hard drive, so now I save the aggravation to connect/disconnect to/from tv/computer!

The remote control is great!

I gave 4 stars because some video formats are no supported, but in general - I recommend this drive without hesitation!

I wanted this to store all my tv shows and movies because my laptop hard drive was bursting. It's pretty slow to transfer files and the transfer speed varies enormously from file to file. The unit itself looks nice and neat but the remote is a bit old looking. It also is on the same frequency as my iPod speakers which can get confusing. When it's in playback or transferring files, it gets incredibly hot. Too hot to touch. I think that's due to the upper metal casing.

It doesn't support mkv files so I had to convert loads to divx. The one thing about this that drives me batty is that if your file naming is not perfect everthing plays out of order even when it looks correct when hooked up to the computer. For instance it will play a tv series as follows, 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 2, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. When I contacted Iomega, they told me to put all my videos into playlists. When I tried to do this, it would only work with music files. However if you prefix your single digit episodes with a "0", they'll play in order. Much simpler than playlists! All in all, it's good value for money but it really could be so much more if a bit more thought had been put into it.

I recently purchased my second one of these. I continue to be impressed with its speed, ease of use and the interface. This is a great device and I would highly recommend it! I cant get over how affordable it is and how much bang for the buck you get!