The Iomega ScreenPlay Director HD is a fantastic media player that can play back most any video and music/sound file, along with photo collections. It supports up to 1080p high definition resolution, stereo surround sound and more. Rent or buy movies and TV shows through Best Buy’s CinemaNow, watch YouTube videos, listen to SHOUTcast internet radio or browse photos on Flickr. This, combined with up to 2TB of hard drive capacity, makes this our number two home media server device.

The Music, Photo and Video menu items will link to libraries you can create either on your computer or directly in the ScreenPlay Director HD menu via folders (for example, a musician, a photography event like a wedding, etc.) and subfolders (like a band’s albums, a director’s movies, specific photos, etc.). Online Media includes access to YouTube, SHOUTcast internet radio stations, Flickr and more.

Hard drive capacities come in 1TB and 2TB of available storage, which will allow users to pack the Iomega ScreenPlay Director HD with plenty of songs, photos and videos without worrying that about overload. Iomega didn’t go with the traditional lay down type of design for the ScreenPlay Director. This player stands vertically (similar to the Nintendo Wii) which is going to find a home beside your TV instead of hiding inside the TV rack. I personally like it better this way because it’s easy to fiddle around with the connections from behind in case you would often move this unit around the house.

As you’d probably expect, the ScreenPlay Director will output 1080p/24Hz video, if provided with it, at the native frame rate. 1080i, 720p, 576i/p and 480i/p output is also supported, unsurprisingly. Of course resolution is only half the story – it’s no good being able to output to 1080p if you’re only playing DVD rips.

Fortunately, the ScreenPlay Director can handle just about every media format going, and certainly all the ones we’d want it to. The full menu is pretty long, but it includes important video formats such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, AVCHD and VC-1, and common containers such as .avi, .m4a, and .mkv – subtitles will display, if provided. There’s even YouTube access, if you really want to inflict that on yourself.

The latest version of Iomega’s hard drive for the Mac mini, the MiniMax, packs a 500GB, 7200rpm hard drive into its mini-sized enclosure. The MiniMax is designed to sit underneath the Mac mini, and so has the same footprint. It shares the mini’s silver and white colour scheme and the two look like they were made for each other when stacked.

In addition to the capacious hard drive, the MiniMax provides additional USB 2 and FireWire ports, making it a powered hub as well as a hard drive. There are three FireWire 400 ports in total, leaving two available when connected to your Mac. And there are three downstream USB 2 ports in addition to the upstream socket. It also has its

Aside from the obviously gorgeous shape and small footprint, there are a few other plusses. You get three FireWire 400 ports and three USB 2.0 ports, which means that you can double up the drive as a hub for peripherals.

It’s also speedy, with a 7200rpm disk whirring inside it, compared to the standard 5400rpm drive that comes in the mini. In our test we duplicated a 1GB file on the drive 21 seconds faster than we could on a Core Duo Mac mini.

Also in the package is Dantz Retrospect, a data backup and recovery software package from EMC that’s quite commonly bundled on external drives from a variety of manufacturers. We’ve reviewed the software as a standalone product in the past; it’s basic but effective at automating data backup, and though not exclusive to this drive, it’s a welcome bonus.