Iomega ScreenPlay TV Link

We’ve featured all sorts of devices for playing your movies, photos and music on your PC, from network streamers to audio/visual hard disks to media centres in their own right. While these are fine for people with home networks or fat wallets, others might want to view their media on TV without having to pay for things they don’t really need, such as networks, additional hard disks or more computers. This is where Iomega’s new device comes in.

Features
The ScreenPlay TV Link is a tiny black box that comes with a remote control and enough connectors to attach it to a TV via Component, Composite or Scart connections. It also has an HDMI socket (though a cable isn’t included) and can output up to 1080i HD quality – ideal for viewing high-res digital photos if you’ve got a compatible TV. Another cable connects the box directly to a power lead and it comes with a basic but functional remote control.

The link to your media comes through a USB port on the device, into which you can plug USB storage. So you copy your videos, photos and music onto a USB memory drive or hard disk, plug this into the ScreenPlay (which you’ve already got plugged into your TV) and then browse through the files and folders on the device via the remote control.

Performance
We started off by plugging the device into a portable TV via the basic composite video cable provided. We plugged in a 2GB USB memory device with some music, photos and short home movies on. The device simply shows the folder structure you’ve created on the device – click on a folder and, if there are media files in there, the device will automatically play through them accordingly. You can stop this, go back and browse through the files if you wish but there are no thumbnails or anything similar to help you see what the files are, just their names. We thought we’d challenge the Screenplay a bit more with a small external hard disk – the type with no separate power cable – and that worked too. We also plugged it into the HDMI option of an HDTV, which was particularly good for looking at photos though it had little benefit for the non-HD movies we were playing.

Ease of use
The device is incredibly simple – almost too simple. The interface does very little other than show the basic file structure on the storage that you’re plugging into the device. While this makes it uncomplicated, you will need to make sure your files are well organised before you plug it in.

The file types supported are fairly limited. Music is OK, with almost everything except Apple’s AAC in the list; but your photos had better be JPEGs and your videos must be in MPEG format. They can be MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4, encoded in a variety of different ways, but if they don’t end in .mpg it’s unlikely you’ll be able to watch without converting first. There’s also no support for HD video – something of a shame since it’ll connect to an HDTV via that HDMI socket.

You can have music playing during a slideshow but it’s not something you can set in the device, rather you have to jump through a few hoops while loading your pictures. First you have to add the desired music file to the folder the photos are in, then make sure that it’s named so it will appear after the photos when they’re listed alphanumerically. It’s nice to have the option but the implementation is a bit rough. We also couldn’t get this working while we were going through the HDMI connection, rather obscurely, though it worked fine through the composite option.

Value for money
Because there’s nothing more to the ScreenPlay than its ability to read files from an external source and translate them onto your TV, you wouldn’t expect it to be too expensive. The £65 price tag isn’t bad but for this much money we would expect a little more refinement to the interface, and would have welcomed the ironing out of some of its more awkward elements.