There's a new product from Imogen Studio that may warrant keeping an eye on. It's a new miniature media player, about the size of a normal
flash drive, that is capable of sending video to mini-HDMI. This tiny media player,
Imogen Studio Cinema Stick HD, has a USB 2.0 connector that allows you to upload videos or music to the internal 4GB flash memory. Additionally, you can use up to 32GB of microSDHC memory cards for a total 36GB of on-board memory. The petite player can be plugged into any HDTV display that supports mini-HDMI and display up to 1080p full HD video.
The Cinema Stick HD boasts a long list of compatible file formats (including MKV, RMVB, TS) with all the most popular video, music and image formats supported. While the entertainment options are impressive, the business options might be even more tantalizing due to many theater systems sporting
USB streaming features already. This could trim thousands off of conference room presentation setups, instead of networking projectors and hidden media PCs, you could just expose an HDMI port and train your execs to use a PowerPoint to Video converter program. Throw this in a lappy bag and ditch your notebook; just connect the Cinema Stick HD to your projector and you're done. The only details that we're missing is in regards to power. Is the Cinema Stick HD capable of harnessing power from the HDMI interface or does it always require a USB connection. Is there a battery? How long will it last? We'll wait on baited breath for those details to emerge on this really intriguing product.
By Paul McCollum on May 17th, 2010
