Western Digital has announced that it has added two new SAS HDDs to its line of enterprise storage solutions the new HDDs are both SAS devices and include the WD S25 and the WD RE SAS 3.5-inch HDD. The S25 is a compact 2.5-inch HDD that uses the SAS 6Gb/s interface and comes in 450GB and 600GB capacities. The drive spins at 10,000 rpm for faster data access.
The S25 was previously available in smaller 147GB and 300GB capacities only. WD is also shipping the RE SAS 3.5-inch HDD to OEMs right now. This storage device spins at 7200rpm and uses the SAS 6Gb/s interface for connectivity. The larger 3.5-inch HDD comes in 1TB and 2TB capacities and is aimed at NAS and other storage uses.
WD offers no pricing information on the new HDDs. “Meeting the demands of our customers and IT professionals in the enterprise market is the primary driver of our long-term commitment to SAS drives,” said Darwin Kauffman, WD’s vice president of enterprise storage solutions. “Our focused strategy in the enterprise continues to ensure that customers who have rewarded WD with their preference of WD drives in other application segments receive the same outstanding values of quality, reliability, performance and availability with WD’s SAS drives. It is with that commitment that we are now able to meet a wider set of customer requirements.”
Apple’s AirPlay might be getting all the attention lately but it’s hardly the first solution for wirelessly streaming media to the television. Far from it. In 2003, the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) formed with its first set of interoperable products hitting the market in 2004. Since then, the alliance has certified thousands of products supported by more than 245 member companies, 29 of whom are listed as “promoter members” including such heavyweights as Sony, Nokia, Samsung, Toshiba, Verizon, AT&T Lab, LG, Qualcomm, Cisco, Microsoft, Panasonic, Intel, HP, and Motorola. Pretty much everyone but Apple. Recently, HTC joined the DLNA ranks with the introduction of two smartphones — the Desire Z and Desire HD — and a tiny media streamer known as the HTC Media Link, HTC’s first attempt to gain a foothold in the living room. Over the last week we’ve been testing the Desire Z (a Eurofied T-Mobile G2) with the Media Link, lazily streaming video, music, and images around the house using a myriad of sources and controllers from Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Western Digital. How did it perform? Click through to find out.
Western Digital has outed its latest media-streaming set top box, the WD TV Live Hub, a low-profile 1TB drive with Full HD 1080p playback support and Netflix, Blockbuster on Demand, Pandora and YouTube. As you’d expect, there’s a fulsome list of supported file types – including MPEG4, Xvid, MKV, H.264 and MOV – while ports include gigabit ethernet, two USB 2.0, HDMI, composite and component video, and optical audio.
Wester Digital throw a remote control into the box as well, and there’s support for DLNA and UPnP streaming so you should be able to squirt content to the TV Live Hub from your PC, Mac or smartphone. In fact the only thing missing for your $199.99 is integrated WiFi, though the company will happily sell you a WiFi dongle.
The team over at DesktopReview has been putting the WD TV Live Hub through its paces, and they seem more than impressed, particularly given a WD 1TB standalone drive on its own is around $129.99. They criticize the absence of third-party apps but generally can’t fault it; however, they also say that Western Digital has been making suspicious noises over Google TV, and while the company won’t confirm they have such a box in the works, that’s certainly what it sounds like.
[Thanks Kevin!]
Press Release:
WD’S NEW HD MEDIA CENTER STREAMS POPULAR MOVIES AND THE BROADEST RANGE OF PERSONAL CONTENT
WD TV® Live Hub™ Media Center With 1 TB Storage Allows Users to Centralize Video, Music and Photos and Play Full-HD 1080p Video on HD TVs Throughout the Home
LAKE FOREST, Calif. – Oct. 26., 2010 – Western Digital® (NYSE: WDC), the world’s leader in external storage solutions and maker of the popular WD TV media player family, today introduced the WD TV® Live Hub™ media center (photo), a Full-HD 1080p media player with a 1 terabyte (TB) built-in network hard drive that gives users the freedom to play all their personal media on any screen in the home. The WD TV Live Hub media center brings new experiences to the WD TV family, including instantly renting or purchasing the newest releases through the Blockbuster On Demand® service, the same day as DVD/Blu-ray release, as well as interacting with personal Facebook® communities. In the U.S., the WD TV Live Hub media center is initially available exclusively at Best Buy online and at all 1,093 Best Buy stores nationwide.
The WD TV Live Hub media center plays a wide variety of media file types, including popular Full-HD 1080p video formats such as .mkv, .mp4 and .mov. The integrated, compact and quiet 1 TB hard drive enables users to centralize their digital media from multiple sources for smooth, glitch-free playback of even the highest resolution videos. Digital media can be easily transferred to the internal drive from shared folders on PCs and Mac®s on the network or directly from external hard drives, thumb drives, camcorders or cameras connected via one of the two USB ports. Users also can stream videos from home network drives with a DLNA/UPnP™ server such as the recently announced My Book® Live™ home network drive.
The WD TV Live Hub media center also is a media server: HD video, music and photos can be streamed from the onboard hard drive to any DLNA/UPnP-compatible TV or multimedia device, anywhere in the connected home, including the WD TV Live Plus HD media player, connected TVs, Blu-ray Disc™ players, Xbox 360®, and PlayStation® 3 game consoles. Users also can stream content from their WD TV Live Hub media center to iPads™, iPhones® or Android™ smartphones using third-party applications.
The WD TV Live Hub media center offers unique Facebook integration, which lets users upload photos and videos, share their status, view their wall and get the latest newsfeed from their network of friends – all on the big screen TV. In addition, the WD TV Live Hub media center provides viewing of Netflix® for movie streaming, YouTube™ for user-generated videos and Flickr® for photo sharing, as well as listening to Pandora®, a personalized Internet radio service. Additional content includes local and international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com®, and MediaFly® daily video podcasts from CNN®, NBC®, MTV® and ESPN®.
The customizable WD TV Live Hub media center’s user interface enables personalization of screen backgrounds and user interface themes, as well as setting of favorites and content ratings. Standard wired or wireless USB keyboards can be used for simpler text input for activities such as searches of local content and YouTube and Facebook interaction.
“The WD TV Live Hub media center lets users create a personalized media jukebox that brings your entire personal content collection and the best of Internet content to the biggest screen in the house,” said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD’s branded products group. “With the WD TV Live Hub media center, consumers can take their home entertainment experience to the next level, streaming personal content to multiple rooms at the same time, so they can play a Netflix video on their HDTV screen in the family room, while sharing vacation slideshows on the computer in their home office.”
“People are looking for a versatile, easy-to-use media player that gives them a smooth streaming experience regardless of where they are in the home and whether they’re viewing Internet content or personal media content. That’s exactly what the WD TV Live Hub media center delivers,” said Frank Bedo, merchandise director in computing at Best Buy®. “We are excited to collaborate with WD on this innovative entertainment product.”
“Connected media players are an exciting new category that is helping to redefine home entertainment,” said Wendy Fritz, senior vice president, computing, at Best Buy. “The WD TV media player series’ broad ability with personal content has made it a leading seller. Add to that the premium content services, and the new WD TV Live Hub media center is bringing a whole new dimension to home entertainment.”
Other key features of the WD TV Live Hub media center include:
Compatibility with virtually all TV sets thanks to an HDMI 1.4, composite video and component video output;
Automatic sync of shared digital media folders from PCs and Macs on the network with the internal hard drive to provide easy playback of new content;
Customizable user interface and programmable remote;
Ultra-compact design that easily fits into almost any entertainment center;
Two USB ports that allow seamless media playback from USB drives, camcorders and digital cameras;
WiFi-readiness (with adapter); and,
A 1-year limited warranty in PanAm.
The full set of features and list of file compatibility is available on WD’s website.
Capacity and Compatibility
The WD TV Live Hub media center is available in 1 TB storage capacity and supports a large variety of the most popular file formats, including HD camcorder video formats. It is also compatible with Windows® 7, including the Windows 7 Play To feature, and any DLNA/UPnP-enabled device.
Price and Availability
The WD TV Live Hub media center is available worldwide (Netflix, Blockbuster and Pandora services are available only in the U.S.) and can be purchased in the U.S. exclusively at Best Buy and online at wdstore.com. MSRP for the WD TV Live Hub media center is $199.99 USD.
Western Digital announced today that the company is beginning shipments of a brand new SATA hard drive. The new drive is already labeled as the world’s biggest SATA hard drive, capacity wise. To add to the bullet points, though, WD decided to make the new hard drive part of their Caviar Green line-up of drives, making it an eco-friendly option for all those out there who think about that kind of stuff.
The new 3TB hard drive is the world’s largest capacity SATA hard drive to date. It is also the latest edition to WD’s Caviar Green lineage of SATA hard drives. As the title suggests, you can get the new hard drive at a maximum capacity of 3TB, which is equal to about 3,000GB. WD managed to wrangle up the ridiculous amount of space by placing 750GB of storage per-patter, along with Advanced Format (AF) technology.
The eco-friendly factor comes in the fact that WD’s Caviar Green line-up of drives feature WD GreenPower Technology, which use lower operating temperatures by reducing power consumption. And, while the press release (which you can read below) focuses mainly on the larger 3TB drive, WD is also throwing in a new 2.5TB hard drive as well. You can pick both of them up right now through authorized resellers in the United States. The 2.5TB drive will cost you $189.00, while the 3TB model will run you $239.00.
Press Release
WD® Now Shipping the World’s Largest Capacity SATA Hard Drives
WD Caviar® Green™ 3 TB Hard Drives Support the Continuing Demand for Increased Capacity in External Storage and Advanced PC Applications
LAKE FOREST, Calif., Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ — WD® (NYSE: WDC) today announced that the company is shipping the world’s largest capacity SATA hard drive. As the latest addition to its WD Caviar® Green™ family of SATA hard drives (photo), the new hard drives deliver up to a massive 3 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity on a single drive. WD is leading the industry in capacity for SATA hard drives by utilizing 750 GB-per-platter areal density and Advanced Format (AF) technology.
WD Caviar Green drives are an eco-friendly storage solution with WD GreenPower Technology™, which reduces power consumption by enabling lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and decreases acoustical noise for quiet operation. The WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB and 3 TB hard drives are designed for use as secondary external storage and next-generation PC storage in 64-bit-based systems.
Drives with capacities in excess of 2.19 TB currently present barriers for PC hardware, firmware and software. To satisfy the new set of requirements of which users must be aware to successfully integrate larger capacity drives, WD is bundling its WD Caviar Green 2.5 and 3 TB hard drives with an Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)-compliant Host Bus Adapter (HBA), which will enable the operating system to use a known driver with correct support for large capacity drives. For more information on solving the 2.19 TB drive barrier, please see the WD information sheet at http://products.wdc.com/largecapacitydrives.
“WD remains a leader of hard drive capacity and low power innovation. With our WD Caviar Green drives, we enable energy-conscious customers to build systems with the highest capacities that deliver the optimal balance of system performance, ensured reliability and energy conservation,” said Jim Morris, executive vice president and general manager of WD’s client systems storage group. “Customers will be able to take advantage of this breakthrough capacity point now for secondary external storage in legacy 32-bit systems that run on Microsoft® Vista® or Windows® 7 platforms.”
Price and Availability
WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB hard drives (model number WD25EZRSDTL) and 3 TB hard drives (model number WD30EZRSDTL) are available now in the U.S. at select resellers and distributors. MSRP for the WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB hard drive is $189.00 USD and the 3 TB hard drive is $239.00 USD. WD Caviar Green hard drives are covered by a three-year limited warranty. More information about WD Caviar Green hard drives may be found on the company’s website at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=866.
If you are like me one of the primary jobs for your external storage drive is to back up the hoards of digital pictures that you take along with digital videos. My mom has all our family pics crammed in photo albums, but today we all tend to have all the photos of special moments on external HDDs where they aren’t easy to view.
Western Digital has announced a new free photo viewing application for the iPad and the iPhone that works with its line of external storage products like the My Book World Edition, My Book Live, and WD ShareSpace called WD Photos. The app allows the user to access up to 285,000 of their favorite images that are placed in a shared folder.
Those images can be accessed using the app from anywhere that you have a web connection. That would mean that you could show off all those photos you have stored at home while you are at the office or around the world. The app has pinch and zoom functionality, horizontal split view for iPad, and the option to post photos from the app to Facebook. Images for the iPad are viewed in 1024 x 768 resolution.
Western Digital has announced updates to three of its external storage solutions including the My Passport Essential, My Passport Essential SE, and the My Book Essential external hard drive. All three of the products have USB 3.0 to allow for faster data transfers of up to 5Gb/s when used with USB 3.0, but are also compatible with USB 2.0 ports.
The most significant update for the three drives comes to the My Book Essential, which now comes in a 3TB capacity along with the previously available 1TB and 2TB capacity drives. The My Passport Essential is the smallest portable drive offered by WD and can be had in up to 500GB and comes in five colors.
The My Passport Essential SE comes in black, silver, red, blue, and white colors with 750GB and 1TB capacities offered. All of the drives also ship with WD SmartWare software for automatic and continuous backups. Pricing is $99.99 for the My Passport Essential, the Essential SE ranges from $129.99 to $169.99 and the My Book Essential is up to $249.99 for the new 3TB offering.
When it comes to getting internet connectivity to your home theater system it can be a big pain. A lot of my gear lacks WiFi connectivity and running network cable inside the walls isn’t an option. If you are like me, the new WD Livewire Powerline Networking kit may be perfect.
The new kit has all the parts you need to connect up to four of your home theater components or game consoles to the web without needing a wireless connection or new cables. The system uses the powerlines already ran in your home to provide fast 200 Mbps connectivity.
WD says that the connectivity speeds offered are plenty fast for shooting full HD 1080p video around your home. The system includes a pair of four port HomePlug AV adapters, Ethernet and power cables, and a setup guide along with utility software. The four ports allow you to connect four devices to your network at the entertainment center. The kit sells for $139.99 and is available right now.
WD has been in the business of making external storage solutions about as long as external storage has been around. The company has also been wrapping its storage tech into products like media players for a while now.
The new WD Elements Play has been announced and it packs its own internal HDD for storing media directly. The Elements Play device comes with 1TB or 2TB of storage. With that much storage, it’s more like an external hard drive that has connectivity for a TV built-in.
That connectivity is for full 1080p resolution using component and composite connectivity along with USB 2.0. The device measures 1.6″ H x 8.9″ L x 5.9″ W and weighs 2.31 pounds. The device supports DTS 2.0 digital sound and has a HDMI output as well.
Were you waiting to get your new WD My Passport Essential external hard drive? Did you think that the standard black, silver, and white models were just way too boring to put on your desk? If that sounds about right, then you’re in luck, because Western Digital is getting ready to launch a brand new series of the devices, with that coveted “limited edition” title tacked on for good measure.
As far as options go, you’ll only get one when it comes to the storage department. Only the 500GB model seems ot be getting the aesthetic treatment. And how is any of this possible? Thanks to the students at the California State University, who are part of the Long Beach Industrial Design program. They’ve created some new designs, and Western Digital was nice enough to put them on their products. Choices wise, you’re looking at either the Boom Box, Cityscape, Fuchsia Leaf, Wave, and Black Hole. All of which you can see pictured above.
Features come in all sorts of ways. The My Passport Essential will work with your PC, thanks to WD’s SmartWare software. There’s 256-bit hardware-based encryption and user-selected password protection. Each of the models will cost you a cool $119.99, and it comes with a two-year warranty.
Netflix is just about everywhere you’d want it to be at this point. Even the mobile scene. So don’t consider us all that surprised that it’s just shown up on yet another box, with access to your full Netflix library. Western Digital has officially announced the availability of their TV Live Plus HD Media Player (which is much like their previous TV Live HD, but with a plus sign), and if you’re interested in all sorts of cool features, then take a look after the break for what it’s bringing to the table, plus that release date and pricing we know you care so much about.
Western Digital packed a few interesting things into the compact TV Live Plus HD Media Player. At least its’ not the worst looking box accessory you can buy for your TV. The custom User Interface will help guide you through your listings, as you peruse the services like YouTube, Flickr, Pandora, and Live365. You’ll also have access to the MediaFly network, which will bring you podcasts from places like CNN, MTV, and ESPN. Network wise, you’ll be able to hardwire into the box itself, but you’ll also be able to stream what you want to watch courtesy of your very own (or your neighbor’s) WiFi network.
Playback comes in 1080p HD. You’ll be able to playback music, videos, and even photos from your TV Live Plus HD Media Player, so if you ever get bored of watching endless movies, or TV shows, you can pass the time by plugging a USB drive into the box, and looking over your family photos. You can pick up the HD box right now, if you really want to, and it will set you back only $149.99. It’s available only in select retailers, or WD’s website. Interested?
Press Release:
New WD TV(R) Live Plus HD Media Player Delivers Thousands of TV Episodes and Movies for Netflix(R) Members to Watch Instantly
WD TV(R) Live Plus HD Media Player Enables Consumers to Stream Their Favorite Shows and Personal Content Directly To Their Big Screen TV
LAKE FOREST, Calif., June 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world’s leader in external storage solutions, today introduced the WD TV® Live Plus HD media player, which makes it easy for Netflix® members to instantly watch thousands of TV episodes and movies on the biggest screen in their home — their HD television set. The new Netflix interface enables members to browse and add movies to their instant Queue on the Netflix Website right from their TV.
In addition to Netflix, the WD TV Live Plus HD media player also enables users to stream personalized Internet content from YouTube™, Flickr®, Pandora®, Live365™, as well as the MediaFly network which includes daily podcasts from CNN, NBC, MTV, ESPN® and other online content providers(1). Unlike most other Netflix-capable devices, the WD TV Live Plus HD media player also lets consumers enjoy a broad variety of the digital media they already own, creating a unified entertainment experience.
The onscreen menu brings together all of the users’ available media in an elegant and simple-to-navigate interface, while the network capability enables users to stream movies from PC or Mac® computers, USB storage devices such as My Passport® portable hard drives, My Book® desktop drives, or network-attached storage such as WD’s My Book® World Edition™ and WD ShareSpace™ to their HDTVs. Compatible with Windows® 7, the WD TV Live Plus HD media player enables the Windows 7 Play To feature so users can initiate and control the streaming of video, music or photos to the media player and home entertainment systems from any Windows 7-based PC on their network.
The WD TV Live Plus HD media player fulfills consumers’ growing demand for large libraries of digital videos, photos and music. According to research firm Parks Associates, the average broadband household will see its digital media storage needs grow to nearly 900 GB by year-end 2014. And users are increasingly looking for easy ways to enjoy the content on the big screen. Parks’ findings reveal that the sales of connected consumer electronics devices, such as connected TVs and digital media adapters, is expected to more than double from 57 million units in 2009 to 115 million units in 2013 (Home Networks for Consumer Electronics 2009).
Similar to the popular generations of WD TV HD media players that preceded it, the WD TV Live Plus HD media player connects directly to a users’ HDTV and plays almost any file stored on a connected USB drive such as My Passport portable hard drives. The WD TV Live Plus HD media player features powerful media processing, which enables playback in Full-HD 1080p resolution. WD TV Live Plus HD media player also plays movies, music and photos stored on other popular USB devices such as digital camcorders and digital cameras.
“Netflix has become a ‘must have’ for consumer electronics devices,” said Netflix vice president of business development Bill Holmes. “We’re proud to align with WD to include Netflix on WD’s groundbreaking WD TV Live Plus HD media player.”
“While Netflix can be found on an increasing number of products such as Internet TVs, Blu-ray Players, video game consoles, and other stand-alone devices, the WD TV Live Plus HD media player is unique as it allows digital media buffs to access and play all of their own personal HD media stored anywhere on their network or USB drives. At the same time they can easily stream Netflix, Pandora, YouTube and other Internet favorites to their HDTV,” said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD’s branded products group.
WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player
Features of the WD TV Live Plus HD media player include:
Full-HD 1080p video playback and navigation with the included remote control and crisp, animated navigation menus;
Access to thousands of TV episodes and movies to watch instantly for any Netflix member with an unlimited subscription;
Wireless ready to support wireless network connection to your home network with an optional USB wireless adapter, which is sold separately;
Supports a wide variety of the most popular file formats with no need to spend time transcoding;
Play videos, music and photos from the Internet on your big screen TV and discover new music with Pandora Internet radio or listen to thousands of radio stations via Live365 Internet radio, daily podcasts from the MediaFly network including CNN, NBC, MTV, ESPN and other online content providers;
Ethernet port for wired or WiFi connection(2) to access files anywhere on the network to play movies, music, and photos from any PC or drive on a home network;
Turns a USB drive(3) into an HD media player and plays content from most popular USB drives, digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players that can be recognized as mass storage devices;
Unlimited media collection, just add more USB drives for more space;
Two USB ports that allow seamless media playback from multiple USB drives displayed in a single list and sorted by media type;
Windows 7-compatible Play To feature enables users to stream Windows 7 computer files to the TV through WD TV Plus HD media player;
Transfer files by copying, moving or deleting files stored on a USB drive, a network drive, camcorder, or a camera to the attached USB drive using the on-screen menus;
Works with digital cameras, digital video cameras and any other digital imaging device that supports Picture Transfer Protocol;
Advanced navigation options including thumbnail and list views, media library and search;
Photo viewing to create custom slide shows, zoom and pan and search;
Movie viewing with fast-forward, rewind, pause, zoom and pan, view subtitles, and search;
Music playback with fast-forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, repeat and search;
HDMI® 1.3 port, composite video and component video output(4) for the highest quality HDTV or home theater;
SPDIF digital output that sends digital signals to your AV receiver for the best surround sound experience; and,
Ultra-compact design to fit easily into a home entertainment center.
Pricing and Availability
The WD TV Live Plus HD media player is available now at select retailers and online at shopwd.com. Covered by a 1-year limited warranty, the MSRP for WD TV Live Plus HD media player is $149.99 USD.
WD has been in the business of making external storage solutions about as long as external storage has been around. The company has also been wrapping its storage tech into products like media players for a while now.
