San Diego — Sony will ship a new hard-disk-based HDTV photo viewer to dealers this month.
The HDMS-S1D digital photo album replaces the L1. Like its predecessor, the S1D boasts an 80GB hard drive but is now capable of displaying images at 1080 resolution and features a variety of built-in software applications for scrap-booking and organizing images.
The S1D features an HDMI output, flash-memory card slots, a CD/DVD burner and USB ports for downloading images. Once on the unit’s hard drive, photos can be organized by date or by events and can be edited, rotated and deleted using its included remote.
The S1D supports displaying RAW images in addition to JPEG images.
Sony’s x-Pict Story HD software loaded into the photo viewer can create photo slideshows using 30 preloaded music tracks and transition effects, or up to five user-loaded songs. The SID can be connected to a printer to produce scrapbook pages created using the x-Pict Story software.
During photo slideshows on the TV, face-detection technology locates faces and adjusts the slideshow transitions around the location of faces, Sony said.
An x-ScrapBook application uses face detection and “event-clustering” technology to create scrapbook-style layouts of photos with a common trait, or pictures grouped by events.
The S1D will retail for an estimated $400.
