Review Lacinema Premier - Your Giant Media Vault

An affordable option to store movies, photos, songs and play them on the telly

ONE OF my customers called me in the middle of the night. He had just returned from an African safari and wanted to show his pictures to family and friends on his 70" LCD television. But there was a glitch. The cable that connects his camera to the TV was missing. He wanted to know whether he could burn the pictures on a DVD and show it using his DVD player. But finding someone to convert the pictures into DVD movie format would not have been possible by brunch the next day, when he was expecting his friends. To make matters worse, his DVD player did not have a USB drive input, so the option of saving the pictures on a pen drive was out. Anyway his player did not support JPEGs. My friend had to put off his show.
Here was a problem any of us could face with the amount of media—movies, music, pictures—that we tend to acquire these days. And I think I have found a solution, though not the best.
Earlier this month, LaCie, known for its external drives, launched LaCinema Premier external media drive in India. The lightweight matt finish plastic box comes with a power adapter, remote control, manual, USB cable and a video/stereo RCA cable to connect it to the TV. My MacBook was unable to save content on the drive and I figured out that by default it was formatted using an NTFS file system, not the default on Mac. So I had to reformat the drive before I dragged about 10 GB of pictures, MP3s, downloaded YouTube videos and encoded DivX movies into it. To make sure that the media detection feature worked, I put all files in a single folder— but you can have as many folders as you want.
When I finally hooked it to my TV, it had no display. I realised that the USB was still plugged in and you couldn't play anything on the LaCie while transferring data to it. Soon, I had some songs playing through my TV speakers. But the interface was bad and the only thing I could see was a timer which showed how much of the song had played, along with a playlist.
I went back to the homescreen which has icons for movies, music, pictures, browse and settings. I selected movies and immediately it listed all Mpeg and MP4 DivX files, though the podcasts and YouTube videos didn't play. I downloaded the latest firmware from the LaCie website and updated the unit, but still no luck. I gave up on the podcasts and turned my attention to the DivX which played normally, though there was some trouble forwarding/rewinding the videos.
The picture viewing was good and the slideshow worked. But I tried out only JPG format. It also played most music formats except music bought on iTunes.
The LaCinema is available in 500 GB and 1TB capacities and ships with a 2-year warranty. The 500 GB version costs Rs 12,500 and the 1 TB version Rs 17,500. It is usually available with computer hardware retailers. Buy it if you are an early adopter of technology, but if you are seriously looking to link your digital media with the TV, this is not the ideal option.

Good
The Box is Small and Easy to Carry
The Remote is nicely laid out
Affordable

Bad
Supports only limited formats
You can't read and write to the drive at the same time
As there is no Ethernet port, you can't update/download content directly from the Internet

Ugly
There is no HDMI Port on the device, though it supports 1080 on component video out
An additional SD Card slot or a USB port would have made it easier to transfer files to the drive
They could make the USB the host port, so that it can read/copy information from digital cameras and other devices
--
The above review appeared in the Indian Express, Dated 19th October 2008