Product Description

Link up your digital media for high quality enjoyment The Iomega ScreenPlay TV Link is an ultra-compact multimedia player that allows you to connect your USB hard drive (NTFS or FAT32), flash drive or Iomega REV Drive (sold separately) to your TV and enjoy your movies, music and photos. With HDMI scalable to 1080i and the convenience of a full-function remote control, the ScreenPlay TV Link adds high quality multimedia features at a low-cost to complement the digital storage you already own. Small enough to easily fit in your pocket, use the ScreenPlay TV Link to enjoy your media collections movies, photos, and music files on any TV at home or when traveling in the latest media formats such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB), MPEG-4 (AVI/DiVX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x/XViD), MP3, AC3 (Dolby Digital Encoding), WAV, WMA, OGG, and JPEG.

Product Details

• Brand: Iomega
• Model: 34386
• Platform: Windows
• Format: CD
• Original language: English, French, Spanish
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.85" h x 9.45" w x 3.15" l, .22 pounds

Features

• The ScreenPlay TV Link easily connects directly to your TV so you can enjoy your movies, music, and photos without being tied to your computer
• Economical way to add high-quality multimedia features to the digital storage you already own
• The pocket-sized TV Link fits easily with your home theatre. Take your ScreenPlay TV Link along with your portable storage drive to enjoy your movies
• Versatile: Plays content stored on your USB hard drive, flash drive, or Iomega rEV drive

Amazon.com Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description The Iomega ScreenPlay TV Link is an ultra-compact multimedia player that lets you connect your USB hard drive, flash drive or Iomega REV Drive to your TV, so you can enjoy your digital collection of movies, music, and photos with big-screen quality. The ScreenPlay TV Link is small enough to fit in your pocket, and it comes with a full-function remote, making it a low-cost and convenient way to enjoy your digital media collection while you travel or from the comfort of your couch.

The HDMI connection lets you connect to your HDTV. View larger.

Watch all your digital media wherever you go with the compact ScreenPlay. View larger.

Easy to Set Up and Use
The Iomega ScreenPlay TV Link takes the digital media files stored on your USB hard drive (NTFS or FAT32), flash drive, or Iomega REV Drive and lets you watch them on your home theater. Set up is as easy as plugging the TV Link in and connecting it to your television. It's an easy way to add functionality to the digital storage you already own.

The included full-function remote lets you control playback from wherever you are, whether you’re sitting in your favorite chair or you’re across the room in the kitchen.

Big-Screen, Home Theater Enjoyment
There's no need to wait for your computer to boot up just so you can enjoy your digital media. And instead of watching your favorite TV episode on your laptop, use the ScreenPlay TV Link to watch it on your big-screen television. With support for HDMI, you'll have a crystal clear high-definition picture scalable to 1080i.

The TV Link also has support for great sound, including AC3 Dolby Digital encoding, so you can play all your music files over your home theater speakers. In addition to HDMI, the TV Link also has the following connections: composite video and audio R/L, component video Y, Pb, Pr; coaxial S/PDIF output, and SCART (RGB) (European users only).

The ScreenPlay TV Link supports the most popular media formats including MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB), MPEG-4 (AVI/DiVX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x/XViD), MP3, AC3 (Dolby Digital Encoding), WAV, WMA, OGG, and JPEG.

Small, Portable Design
Measuring just 3.25 x 3.07 x 0.78 inches (HxWxD) and weighing a mere 0.22 pounds, the ScreenPlay TV Link easily fits in your pocket, letting you take it with you on the road. Now you can truly watch what you want to watch no matter where you are.

The Iomega ScreenPlay TV Link is powered by an Energy Star-qualified adapter and is backed by a one-year warranty.

What's in the Box
Iomega ScreenPlay TV Link, remote control, power supply, composite video cable, component video cable, SCART adapter (European users only), and quick-start guide.

Watch any of the files on your USB hard disk on your big screen TV.

Customer Reviews

Like many Iomega products -- good, but not perfect
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.

Sniff sniff
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.

Simply the best gadged I've ever owned!
Tested with 160GB, 320GB and 500GB WD passport drives, and all of them worked perfectly. This is a great product overall.