LaCie will release this week a portable USB hard drive with the ability to plug directly into multi-standard television sets for instant playback of stored movies, music or photos. The drive comes in 40GB or 80GB capacities.
According to LaCie, silverscreen is pre-configured to recognize and instantly play back a wide range of movie file formats, including the MPEG-2 ISO format and the compressed DivX format. Silverscreen also supports surround sound thanks to the optical digital output that supports compressed Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS pass through.
Other features of the silverscreen drive include:
The 40GB LaCie silverscreen is immediately available for US$249; the 80GB model will be available in February for $329.