LaCie silverscreen announced

If your USB thumbdrive is going to be your MP3 player, why not make your USB 2.0 hard drive your media center?  That's the question LaCie is asking with their newly announced silverscreen. 

It's got all the features that you would expect in an external hard drive — storing and retrieving information — but on the back you'll find a big port which we assume connects to a break-out box of some sort. The datasheet (PDF) lists composite, S-Video and component out video; "dual stereo analog audio" (is that redundant or are there two stereo-outs?), coaxial SPDIF and optical SPDIF audio; and an IR receiver for the included remote. You can push the usual suspects through those ports: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (yes, that means DivX) video of various flavors; MP3, WMA and AAC audio; and JPEGs up to 8 megapixels to remind you of how inadequate your digital camera is.

While it gets its power from USB, they do list a power adapter on the datasheet so you won't have to drag your computer over to the TV to use it.  Hopefully the next version will use Firewire and allow you to hook it directly up to an HDTV without the need for all those cables.  Pricing is $250 for the 40 GB or $330 for the 80 GB and is expected to ship in mid-February.

Comments

[peBird]

They're close with this one - I'm waiting for someone to produce a product that combined expandability (e.g., consumer NAS) with an interface directly to A/V equipment as well as computer equipment. 80GB is great to start (2.5" drives are a great form factor, if not storage capacity), and a way to RAID them together shouldn't be that hard.

[RocksInMySocks]

I agree with peBird that this would be far more compelling with NAS capability. As far as concept goes, the LaCie is not the first product of this kind (see links below) and I feel we are about to see an explosion of similar drives.

I don't know about the LaCie... but what killed drives like this for me is that in order to function as media server the USB must be disconnected. Or at least that is what I've read in forums. I'd be delighted if I could be corrected on this.

Here are links two media server hard drives...

AivX
http://www.cooldrives.com/aidimi2usbdr.html

ModiX
http://www.cooldrives.com/hdmohdpousb2.html

That little Sigma chip is sure showing up in a lot of places.

[Lorin Rivers]

I saw this at Macworld. Not only is the LaCie not the first of its kind, there was an identical product from G-Tech about three booths away. Different enclosure, different _colors_ in the UI, but the remote and the behavior of the device was identical. Funny...

It's basically a laptop drive with a card running embedded linux.

<http://www.g-technology.com/>

[Joe]

G-tech offers the G-play which should be available in a month or so. Unfortunately I have not seen any reviews of the G-play, or the AivX. Does anyone know if these brands are 'any good' (i.e. reliable?). I am really interested in one.
Thanks.

[tigerjuju]

Ximeta has a 2.5 inch HD enclosure already out that does similar stuff. They are also releasing a new 2.5 inch external drive what is also NAS capable in the first quarter of 2005.

Currently Available Drive Enclosure:
http://www.ximeta.com/products/media/media_share/index.html

To be released with NAS:
http://www.ximeta.com/products/media/media_share/index.php

I had a chance to test the enclosure, the video/audio quality is superb. It was able to play 90% of videos with different format I throw at it. But it has problem doing rewind/fastforward/pause with about 30% of those video. Hopefully these are things firmware update will fix in the future.
I also like the fact that you can install/uninstall drives into this enclose without any tools.

[someone]

please have a look at this product

http://www.unibrain.com/iZak/iZak.htm

and let me know if you can find any differences to the one from LaCie (except of the brand name of cause)

[Vani]

I was searching for these kind of products for almost three months. I bought MG-25 (from AirlinkTek). It skips audio once every 5 seconds (there was a blank sound for 1 sec). Though the audio quality was good, this skipping irritated me a lot and I returned the product with 15% restocking fees.

Most of these korean products are either same or sold with different names. For eg, the one at Ximeta (http://www.ximeta.com/products/media/media_share/index.html) is exactly same as MG-25.

Avoid Korean products. Most of the web sites have only 15-days return policy with 15% restocking fees on these. Haven' tried Lacie yet, but will do it.

[Hadi]

Any recent reviews on the lacie silverscreen?
or any other similar products?!

[derek barnes]

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