Gizmodo
Sony appears to be making a consumer-server play, introducing the $400 80GB HDMS-S1D "photo album" for the high-def enjoyment of up to 50,000 still images. You can import photos via Memory Stick slot—but also SD, CF and xD! (Way to go, Sony!) You can connect the HDMS-S1D to your TV via HDMI, and navigate slideshows using its remote control. It has a CD/DVD burner for getting and saving shots. We also see an Ethernet port, so we're going to assume there's at least some way to push photos to it from your PC (or Mac?) In addition to letting you edit, rotate, delete and group photos on screen, there are also some unique automated features:
• x-Pict Story HD automatically builds "professional quality" slideshows
• Face detection technology locates faces and frames slideshow transitions around faces
• x-ScrapBook sets photos in templates, using face detection and event-clustering for sharp layouts
Here's what the back of the sucker looks like:
And here's what it looks like when people far prettier than you get together and use it in their Sonylicious home:
Press release:
SONY'S NEW DIGITAL PHOTO ALBUM TURNS PHOTO COLLECTIONS INTO HIGH-DEFINITION ENTERTAINMENTStore, Organize and Share Photos with Slideshow and Scrapbook-style displays
NEW YORK, Oct. 17, 2007 -Sony today announced the HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album for shutterbugs who want to archive, organize and enjoy slideshows of their digital photos. This compact device features an 80GB hard drive, connects to a high definition television via HDMI and showcases up to 50,000 high resolution photos.
The new digital photo album offers several methods for importing photos, including multiple flash memory card formats, CD, DVD, USB or Ethernet. Once imported, photo collections can be managed with the supplied remote control and the device's intuitive interface.
Photos can be organized by date, special occasions such as birthdays and travel (using pre-selected icons), or into as many as 3,000 different photo albums- enough for every major family milestone. The digital photo album also provides the ability to review, edit, rotate, delete and arrange photos for a slideshow or digital scrapbooking with Sony's x-Application® features.
The photo managing x-Pict Story HD™ software creates professional quality slideshows, eliminating the need for PC-based photo editing. Slideshows can be created by selecting from 30 pre-loaded music tracks and transition styles. For personalization, you can add up to five songs from your own CDs. The software also allows for connection to a compatible printer for making prints of your photos or scrapbook pages directly from the device.
The HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album uses Sony's face detection technology to locate faces in photographs and adjusts the slideshow transitions around the location of faces.
When creating digital scrapbooks, the x-ScrapBook™ application sets photos within scrapbook templates, and uses face detection and event-clustering technology to make scrapbook-style layouts of photos with a common trait like photos of children, or pictures grouped by events such as a party or vacation.
When family or friends request copies of the photos they've seen on your HDTV, you can select and save those photos to CD, DVD, or flash memory card.
The HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album will be available in October for about $400 online at sonystyle.com, across the country at Sony Style® retail stores (www.sonystyle.com/retail) and at authorized dealers nationwide.
Comments
looks pretty neat... but only 80gb?
So, less functionality and 1/2 the space of an apple TV for the same money. Sign me up.
How is this necessary? I would venture to say that most people already have some kind of device hooked up to their TV that is either already networked, has card slot, or at the very least, a USB port. Hell, even most new TV's have these things built in. So not worth $400.
great.. another odd-sized piece of equipment to collect dust and not fit in a normal cabinet alongside normal-sized equipment. Too little too late sony - too little too late.
Wouldn't you be better off just to buy a ps3?
mac mini?
sure, it has xd/cf/sd slots, but do they work?
I reckon sony has put a little mulcher in there that will chew them up and spit out the bits.
Are there really people out there who'd buy something like this, just to look at photos? Unbelievable.
Why?
Make it 320 GB and $199 and you got an awesome product
In the bottom picture, the guy in black staring at the unit is saying:
"Sooo... It really just shows pictures? It doesn't play music? Does it have a DVD player at least? No. Just pictures and slideshows... Huh... No, that's great... really... You, uh, you have a lovely home."
You seem to have missed the point that it also has a DVD/CD burner drive as well. I don't think you'll find that on Apple TV.
Despite the derision heaped on it by you lot I think this is a reasonable product at an unreasonable price.
Most people's digital photos languish on hard drives largely unviewed and this gives them an easy way to view them. Sony has built-in every format currently known to people including NAS by the looks of it, has made it easy to get stuff out of it and has given you the option of using it stand-alone with a screen or as part of a home network.
I think it's a great idea and a great product but poorly priced and with woefully insufficient storage. I need to see if it has backup options as well and lack of wifi is possibly another oversight.
Is the OS on some internal flash, or is it running off of the hard disk? If the disk is for nothing but picture storage, then the user could probably swap it out for any size disk they would like...
If it played MP3s as background music, and played AND upscaled DVD videos, then it is worth it.
It looks like a GameCube...
AppleTV FTW! I can stream movies, TV Shows, music, podcasts, youtube, and sync my pictures. It's cheaper (40GB), works with all my itunes library, Mac and Windows support, and even has 802.11N wireless. I don't need a DVD drive attached to it, or media card slots, as I load all my pictures into my COMPUTER.
If this is the device that's supposed to be to bridge the gap between computer and television for photos, then why make a product that is more like an editing/reviewing storage box that stands all alone?
Yet another sign that Sony no longer innovates.
Network port is included on the device so that you can easily install a root kit on your computer.
So what does this do that my modded Xbox/XBMC doesn't? I use it for 1080i slideshows of my pictures over component, and far more.
Is CD burning, HDMI and a double-take pricetag its only standout features?
Sony has lost their blinkin' mind. This product's anemic features and inflated price tag give the illusion that the PS3 is a good value.
80GB? Really? That's what you're going with? I can't even BEGIN to understand why.
When you can buy a Seagate Barracuda 7200 500GB Hard Drive retail for $120 there is ABSOLUTELY no reason to be at a meager 80GB.
weak.
You know what would really top this thing off...having a Rolly dance on top of it.
What is that huge fan doing? it's only a 80GB HD!!
I haven't room for any other device in my setup, my last purchase was an Xbox\XBMC... and I don't know where to put that... and it's bit more useful than this thing.
@Spyrojoe:
Uh what world do you live in. I would say the amount of people with some sort of digital link between their digital files and their TV is in the severe minority. I would even venture to say that most of the people that do have this feature rarely use and and most probably don't even know how.
This looks like crap, specs are meh, price no thank you.
Good 'ol Sony with it's finger on the pulse of the consumer. Just what everyone needs. A server to store PHOTOS on. Why store them on a small iPod when your can store them on a machine 10x as large?
Headline: "Sony Photo Server crashes. Family kills self."
sonylicious home... is that why there is an ipod in the dock by the A/V receiver? or do my eyes deceive me...
10/100 lan?
Wheres the 1000? transferring 80 gigs must be a pain at 100 mbps
But still that whole professional automatic slideshow maker with facial recognition.
How many ipods, Apple tvs and seagate HDD's have that along with a dvd burner and a slideshow maker that also can add music to the slideshow and all of this without having to turn on your computer?
I'm waiting.
WTF.. my Wii can do this.. not in "HD" but my 360 can.
@iForgot_my_iName: There might be a Walkman around there somewhere, perhaps in one of the pockets of the Sonylicious people.
It can't play music, because according to Sony's head legal counsel, making one copy of a song is stealing one copy...
And they said AppleTV was bad..
@Spyrojoe:
You venture wrongly.
At present, most people have CRT TVs with either a VCR or a standard DVD player. Most people don't know it's possible to network non-computer devices, and most people can't tell a card slot from a USB port from a gaping hole drilled behind your device.
Sad as it may sound, there has always been a demographic of the rich and technologically impaired who will pay for the newest gadgets that can do the simplest things. Get a life, guys...Sony isn't designing this product for sexless geeks who mod their Xbox to stream slideshows from Flickr.
If Apple can justify a $400 iPod which plays music and photos, why can't Sony justify a $400 home-networked computer (potentially hackable into a presentable small form factor HTPC) which plays music and photos? I for one think this will be a great gift to get my grandma so that I can just burn her CDs of my pictures that she can just load in and flip on the remote to watch without knowing how to use one of them newfangled computer thingamajigees.
$400 would be a nice price if the unit supported CableCard 2.0 and HD-DVR with the necessary I/O (including HDMI 1.3 for 1080p). Best support eSATA for expansion.
I also want to hit one button on the remote to print a photo.
Your grandparents will love it.
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