Sony Offers Up HD Photo Viewing Device

The new HDPS-L1 sports an 80GB hard drive and is designed to take photos transferred from a variety of memory cards and output them to a television via component video.

Sony over the weekend announced a new dedicated photo storage unit with high-definition output. The new HDPS-L1 is priced at just under $300 and should be available in May.

The HDPS-L1, said Sony, is a 80GB hard drive photo storage unit which outputs to a television via both standard analog and 720p component video. Photos are transferred onto the device, which is about half the size of a typical DVD player, via memory card slots which support Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick PRO Duo, CompactFlash, Multi Media Card, Microdrive, SD Cardand xD Picture Card. Features include one touch copy from memory card to hard drive, a built-in USB port, eight multimedia slideshow options, a wireless remote, automatic sorting of photos by date created and manual sorting of photos by group.

“We expect all sorts of people will take advantage of this new photo storage device to rescue treasured memories buried in their computers and on memory cards, and bring them to life with its built-in slideshow feature,” said Jim Leahey, general manager of peripherals and enhancements at Sony Electronics, in a statement. “It finally gives high-resolution still pictures the visual realism usually reserved for motion-pictures.”