PhotoPort TV100

[phypor]

Got one at wal-mart on clearance for 15$ (MSRP $100)

It's a well designed tv picture viewer for SmartMedia and CompactFlash (inc MicroDrive) up to 512MB, has an infrared keyboard and infrared remote, and usb interface that let's it function as a sm/cf reader when plugged into your computer.

For viewing pictures on tv it works nicely... it will dig through multiple deep directories automatically to find all pictures on the media so it doesnt matter where your camera stores its images (or where you put them from your computer). It has a standard slideshow mode and an album mode where you can do moderate image manipulations (crop, rotate, scale), add captions with the keyboard and move display order around.

As a sm/cf card reader it worked right off. Apparently the usb storage chipset in it is the same or similar to the one in the ImageMate SDDR-75, because I didn't have to change any of my USB Mass Storage kernel stuff for the PhotoPort TV100 to work. I've mounted, copied, moved files to and from the SM without any trouble. The CF mounted fine, the filesystem showed up ok, and files copied from the reader, but when I tried to unmount it, the umount process hung and went D. YMMV.

I will followup here on my luck at getting the wireless keyboard to work with my Pinnacle Pro TV card IR reciever, another value add to the product usefulness.


Aside from the CF hang on umount (and it maybe a kernel driver bug), I would recommend this unit to anyone that came across on clearance or ebay (only worth $100 to a rich gadgetphile, but knowing what I know now I'd prolly pay up to $30 for it)

Hope someone finds this info useful...

~phypor


Gentoo Forum ImageMate Info

Manufacturer's Product Site

DigitalEdge Review

ConsumerGuide Review
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