Canon's new hard drive for the TV
LAS VEGAS - Canon, the company best known for its iconic cameras, is getting into the hard drive business.
At CES2015, Canon unveiled a different kind of hard drive--one that's meant to be plugged into the TV, instead of a computer.
Canon's Chuck Westfall calls the $299 1TB CS100, a "small, subtle device," meant to bring photos off the computer and into the living room, without having to worry about wires and plugs.
Several new Canon point and shoot PowerShot models and Vixia camcorders have NFC chips built in to allow for wireless transfers. You just place the camera near the drive and the process should start automatically.
That's the idea, anyhow. In our tests at the Canon booth, the transfers had some hiccups, perhaps due to the connection issues on the convention floor. But since photo and video files are large, it was easy to see that the transfers won't be instant. Our small series of shots took a few minutes for the progress bar to get to 100%. Many photos, or video files, should take even longer.
For those with cameras that don't have NFC chips (and that's most) Canon also has slots for Compact Flash and SD memory cards as well.
The drive will be released in June.
Follow Jefferson Graham on Twitter