Home > Consumer Reviews > Iomega ScreenPlay Pro HD Multimedia Drive - Digital multimedia receiver / HDD recorder - black

I'll start by mentioning its good points: the picture and sound quality is brilliant. Who needs Sky Plus and the like when you can download what you want and watch it when you want? However, it's not quite so simple as that.

The user interface to this thing was designed by someone who has never used anything more complicated than a fork. When you have a unit that holds 1TB of information, you NEED to be able to search or index that information quickly. Not so with Iomega's device - everything is an incredible chore. I've got 80gb of music, but not only can I not go to artists using either an on-screen keyboard, or even text-message style ABC methods, you can't even keep your finger down on the down arrow. Each menu movement has to be accompanied by an individual press. Suffice to say, I never, ever, listen to Vampire Weekend via this thing.

Then there's the TV and film perusal. It's pretty handy having the little preview in the corner of the screen, but it actually turns out to be a massive pain because the unit freezes as it prepares to preview. So you're left frustratingly pressing the down button until it wakes up, then all those previous presses are acknowledged and you end up somewhere completely different to where you wanted to be. Couple this with the fact that it never remembers where you were in a series (pressing stop randomly either takes you back to where you where, or to the beginning of the list) - let alone remembering from directory to directory. Even worse, it sometimes doesn't remember where you are on episode by episode playback, so you'll sometimes end up watching episode two of a series all over again.

The remote control is also pretty terrible. Unless you're utterly accurate with pointing it DIRECTLY at the sensor, it doesn't pick it up, so you end up resorting to a contortionist impression on the couch, trying to bend light around whatever may be interfering with the beam's line of sight.

Finally, the network speed is appalling. It seems limited to about 1mbit/s so copying across a series takes about as much time as downloading it in the first place. Rubbish.

It's inexcusable really. Don't these people have product testing? It's almost 200 quid's worth of money spent on this thing, and for a little bit more I could have bought an XBox 360 that does much much more, and is designed by people that actually use technology on a day to day basis.

A wish list for Iomega:

*Sort out the interface and let me search somehow
*Remember where I was from directory to directory - the thing has a HD built in, store something about what I'm doing. Let me know if I've already watched something.
* Allow it to be controlled remotely - it's networked so give me something resembling the Slingbox UI to run something (if you can't be arsed to provide a decent interface to begin with)
* Sort out the shoddy remote control. For the price of this I expect to be able to get a response from the street, let alone pointing directly at it from an inch away.

Easy to use and setup. But video quality is inferior to plugging your labtop into the tv. It often cuts off the edges of the video so your missing a good bit of the picture. Many formats don't work with it either and it is not possible to update it for this yet. Your better off just buying a cable to plug in your laptop.

Easy to use.
Came with HDMI cable.
Delivered within 3 days.
Easy to set up to both t.v and computer.
Suprisingly it is quite compact.

Over all a good product to have sitting beside your t.v or your computer.

if you did have a screen play 500 or les gb and you was quaite happy you will like this product. looks nicer not only outside but also menu look so much better. i think quality between 1 tb and 500gb is this same but for my opinion if you need a lot space that something for you. anfortunately is more expensive.