LaCie’s LaCinema Hard Disk Does HDTV

Is it a hard disk, or a media locker? LaCie's LaCinema Classic hard disk is kind of both, offering HDMI output, 1080p upscaling, DivX support...and up to 1 TB of storage.

Storage and peripheral vendor LaCie has taken the wraps off its new LaCinema Classic Hard Disk, which looks to bridge the gap between a traditional hard drive storing photos, music, and video, and a media device users hook up to their HDTVs or living room setups in order to enjoy their digital media. The LaCinema Classic Hard Disk offers either 500 GB or 1 TB of storage capacity, and users can load it up via USB 20=.0 from any PC. One the media has transferred, users can then hook the drive up to their living room setup via HDMI, composite video, and/or S/PDIF and stereo audio output to enjoy their media on their HDTVs or home music setups. The LaCinema drive supports MPEG-4 AVI, XviD, and DivX video, WMA and MP3 audio, and JPEG and HD-JPEG images—and it’ll upscale video to 1080p resolution and supports both PAL and NTSC output.

“The LaCinema Classic offers users just what they need to store and play their favorite content wherever desired, connected to their PC or Mac, or directly to their television, for an affordable price,” said LaCie’s multimedia manager Patrick Salin, in a statement.

The LaCinema drive features a black-with-blue-underlighting design from frequent LaCie collaborator Neil Poulton…although, unfortunately, it does pack an external power supply.

The LaCinema drive is available now with prices starting at $159; LaCie doesn’t say, but we presume that’s for the 500 GB model, with the 1 TB model presumably coming in a bit higher.