Iomega ScreenPlay Plus HD Multimedia Player 1 TB - 34499

Other products by Iomega

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 4.4 x 6.1 x 8.9 inches ; 3.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B002PY7LM4
• Item model number: 34499
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 17, 2009

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Enjoy watching digital files on your TV without being connected to the computer! The Iomega ScreenPlay Plus HD Media Player is a cost-effective, high definition multimedia player, plus a high capacity digital storage device for your PC. It has high definition playback up to 1080i, is DivX certified, and has a compact, sleek black style to complement your home entertainment system. The ScreenPlay Plus HD Media Player includes an HDMI connection and is compatible with the latest media formats such as MP3, AC3 (Dolby Digital Encoding), WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB), MPEG-4, JPEG and more. Plus, software is included to backup your media files and protect your computer from viruses. Available in a 1TB capacity, the ScreenPlay Plus is powered by an Energy Star qualified adapter for a better environment.

Iomega ScreenPlay Plus HD Media Player, 1TB

Watch your Digital Media on your HDTV!

Viewing your stored photos and videos has never been easier!
Enjoy stored movies, photos, and music on your HDTV instead of being confined to a small computer monitor. The ScreenPlay Plus offers easy high definition video viewing and enough capacity to save your entire media library. A convenient USB port is included on the front of the player for easy access to media content on other external USB storage devices when plugged into your HDTV and the device sits horizontally or vertically with included stand.

Enjoy your high definition media in two easy steps. First, save your media files from your computer to the ScreenPlay Plus HD Media Player. Then, plug your ScreenPlay Plus into an HDTV in your media room and enjoy your videos, photos, and music with family and friends. It’s so easy. The simple to use remote offers plenty of options for viewing videos, photos, and listening to music—easily navigate through folders, zoom in on photos, create audio playlists, play slideshows, subtitles, and more.

A cost effective media player AND storage device with software included!
With high capacity storage and viewing capabilities, the ScreenPlay Plus is a great value. A 3-year limited warranty is included to protect your investment when you register your product.

Plus, valuable Iomega Protection Suite software is included with your purchase and available via download. This includes a free six month subscription of McAfee VirusScan Plus software to protect your PC with anti-virus, anti-spyware, 2-way firewall, and web security protection, Iomega QuikProtect for simple scheduled file-level backup, and EMC Retrospect Express or Express HD to back up your data, plus applications and settings. You can also choose MozyHome Online Backup for the convenience of backing up online (2GB free!).

Energy Star Qualified for a Better Environment

Product Features

• 1TB of capacity for your media files
• HDMI connection to easily plug into your HDTV
• Convenient USB interface on front
• Multiple TV/AV connections on back
• HD playback up to 1080i
• Supports MPEG1/2/4; DivX; XviD
• DivX Home Theatre Certified
• Iomega Protection Suite Software (via download)
• 3 year warranty with product registration
• Energy Star qualified adapter for a better environment

What’s in the Box
ScreenPlay Plus HD Media Player, remote control, stand, power supply, USB cable, composite video cable, component video cable, Quick Start Guide, Iomega Protection Suite Software (via download)

Product Description

Set your media collection free! Enjoy the convenience of watching digital files on your home theatre or TV without being connected to the computer (PC only)! The Iomega ScreenPlay Plus HD Media Player is a cost-effective, high definition multimedia player plus a high capacity digital storage device. HD playback to 720p/1080i and DivX certified! In a compact, sleek black style to complement your home entertainment system, the ScreePlay Plus HD Media Player includes an HDMI connection and is compatible with the latest media formats such as MP3, AC3 (Dolby Digital Encoding), WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB), MPEG-4 (AVI/DivX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x/XViD) and JPEG. Plus, software is included to backup your media files and protect your computer from viruses. Available in 1TB capacity, the ScreenPlay Plus HD Media Player is powered by an Energy Star qualified adapter for a better environment.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent price/performance for what I wanted it to do..., November 15, 2009

By	Mahlers2nd "Mommy of Many Interests" - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

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, Mirantz 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]

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Easy To Use (Mac Compatible too)... But Limited, November 18, 2009

By	Arnim Zola - See all my reviews

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.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Quality problem with hard drive and annoying interface, October 21, 2009

By	Gadgester "No Time, No Money" (Mother Earth) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

The Iomega ScreenPlay Plus HD is a 1TB hard drive-based media player that stores video, audio and photo files from your computers and plays them back on your TV set, via composite, component or HDMI. Initially I liked it; but after only 3 weeks of light use, its internal hard drive developed problems, plus the drive's transfer speed is slow, so I give it only 1 star.

Basically, the hard drive suddenly failed to start (after being completely powered off for 2 days), and after several tries, it did start spinning again but was making some loud clicking noise. This went away after I shut down the device, waited 2 minutes, and powered it on again. In the last two days the drive felt "ill" when it tried to spin up from standby. Therefore, I now have serious doubts about the quality of this product and really expect the internal drive to die anytime now.

Speed-wise, the 1TB drive is slower than my Toshiba portable drives (500GB and 640GB versions), even though the Toshiba drives are powered by USB only and much smaller in size and weight.

The ScreenPlay Plus has a small footprint, but it feels quite hefty in your hand, so be careful when picking it up. It also gets VERY HOT even in standby mode, so be extra careful when you touch it after it's plugged into the AC adapter. It supports the following media formats:

VIDEO:
--MPEG-1 (VCD 1.0/2.0, SVCD)
--MPEG-2 (AVI, VOB)
--MPEG-4 (part 2, ASP)
--DivX (3.11, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x)
--XviD
(For videos, supported file extensions are avi, divx, mov, mp2, mp4, mpe, mpeg, mpg, m4a, m4v, vob, xvid, ifo, iso)

AUDIO:
--MP3
--AC3 (Dolby Digital Encoding)
--WAV
--WMA
--OGG Vorbis
--AAC (non-DRM)

PHOTOS:
--JPEG
--BMP

While the list is impressive, it's disappointing that the ScreenPlay Plus does not support Flash (FLV) files, or GIF pictures. It's easy to transfer files, but because it does not use a structured folder system like the PS3 -- the player behaves like Windows Explorer when you search for files to play -- looking for your media files can be a hassle.

I have five other complaints: (1) it needs the AC adapter for both PC connection and TV playback, but only one AC adapter is included, which is very inconvenient; (2) there is no 1080p support (although, admittedly, at this price point, maybe this is not a valid complaint); (3) there is a noticeable and annoying delay when you press a button on the remote for any operation; over time this can get a little tiring and annoying but not a detrimental flaw; (4) the LED indicator at the front does not show you the status of whether the ScreenPlus is on standby or actually powered on and working; (5) waking up from stand-by is very slow: it takes 30-40 seconds.

Overall, I feel this is a product that needs a better-quality internal drive and a more refined, more responsive user interface.

(See the comments section of this review for a tip and the link to the online user's manual.)