Groundbreaking hard drive that knows how to entertain
Price: $249
by William Van Winkle
As long as you have a product capacious enough for tons of movies, music albums, and pictures, why not fill in the missing pieces so that you can play those files on any TV? That's exactly what LaCie was thinking with its 9.5-ounce, 40GB silverscreen drive. The company added the necessary circuitry for DivX video playback as well as Dolby and DTS audio pass-through support, slapped S/PDIF (digital audio) and HDMI (the successor to DVI that combines audio and video) connectors on the back panel, and added a thin remote to complete the ten-foot experience. Additional adapters provide compatibility with S-Video, composite, and RCA audio connections.
LaCie supports just about every A/V format you can think of: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI, ISO, VOB), MPEG-4 (AVI, DivX, XviD), and all the major audio formats, including MP3, WMA, and AAC (though not iTunes). Video quality is outstanding, and LaCie covers resolutions up to 1920 x 1080i or 1280 x 720p (i and p correspond to specific HDTV broadcast standards)for those with HDTVs. Our only gripe regards the IR remote and its almost maliciously unintuitive button layout. An 80GB version of the silverscreen is available for $50 more.
The silverscreen's physical design is striking, with a tough clear shell encasing the drive, silver along the top and sides, and an exposed underside for a little geek-chic flair. Its performance on our 10GB test was inexplicably high for a 4,200-rpm drive, turning in a first-place time of 8 minutes and 38 seconds. LaCie was at a loss to explain it, but we're not complaining. Overall, this is a groundbreaking hard drive that knows how to entertain.
