Today WD announced the newest WD TV Live which features a 1 TB built in drive, Wi-Fi and the first media hub for the television to deliver a Spotify app for your music listening pleasures. Premium subscription with Spotify required.
Along with Spotify, users of the newest WD TV Live which features a new UI will have access too NetFlix, Hulu Plus, Blockbuster, CinemaNow, Pandora, Youtube, Facebook and more.
The new WD TV Live is available starting today at the WD Store, for $99.99.
Today WD announced two new drives for the Mac, the My Passport Studio and the My Passport for Mac.
All I can say is wow…why aren’t WD drives designed for the PC as stylish as the mac versions? I’ll tell you why because from what I am told Apple works closely with OEMs to deliver stylish products that compliment their systems. The drives have an all metal design, and the performance every mac power user needs.
We always hear about the cloud, but what is it really? “The Cloud” is just a fancy term for a server that host your documents and allows you to access them from anywhere on pretty much any device with a web browser.
Hosting your documents to “The Cloud” can be expensive, Amazon S3 charges $0.14 per GB for the first TB. What exactly will you be paying? Not really sure could be 14 cents or it could be $140 a month. They you have to worry about how many request you make and how much data is transferred the entire thing can get down right confusing.
Today Western Digital announced the WD Nomad a rugged yet stylish looking case for your portable My Passport drives. The Nomad is a polycarbonate case with anti-shock cushioning that will protect the drive from damage, if you drop while climbing a mountain or drop it into a river while hiking.
You never need to remove the drive from the case once your drive is in it. The Nomad becomes its new enclosure and permanent enclosure until you decide to replace thed rive inside or simply remove it if you no longer want it inside the Nomad. By the way it also meets Military Spec. (MIL-STD-810G)
Today Western Digital announced the availability of an iOS and Android app. The apps will allow you to push content from your mobile device to your television seamlessly via your WD TV Live hub. The Apps which are free are available now in the Android Market Place and the Apple App Store.
Just think about it you can be on the west coast of the United States and the apps will allow you to send the content to a WD TV Live 3000 miles away on the east coast. No longer will you have to email a picture or video, you can simply place it on someones WD TV Live.
You can also access the content stored on your WD TV Live or MyBook live via the apps. Just think about it you’ve more than quadrupled the storage space on your iPhone and iPad when you think about it.
Today Western Digital launched a 2.5 TB and 3 TB WD AV-GP SATA hard drives designed specifically for AV Platforms. The drives are already shipping and WD claims they will offer users 24×7 reliability and low power consumption.
“Designed to go the distance in high-temperature, always-on streaming digital AV environments, WD AV-GP drives store more hi-def audio and video than ever before with our new 2.5 TB and 3 TB versions,” said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager, of WD’s branded products and CE business units. “Combine unsurpassed capacity, power-saving WD GreenPower Technology™, and performance capabilities to capture up to 12 simultaneous HD video streams with SilkStream™ technology and the drive choice is made clear in optimizing AV applications like PVR/DVR, IPTV and video surveillance.”
I recently acquired a new notebook PC with USB 3.0 ports built in, no need for a PCI-Express card or any type of peripheral to take advantage of the speed advantages offered by USB 3.0. My only problem was I really didn’t have a portable USB 3.0 hard drive. I did have desktop USB 3.0 drives but I can’t carry those around with my notebook.
So I got my hands onto the WD My Passport Essential SE portable HDD for USB 3.0. I chose it because it is an elegant drive with a sleek piano black finish that matched my notebook perfectly, I like things that match, it was also small enough to fit in my pockets. I liked the small form factor because I am often in a rush and while I may shove my notebook into my briefcase I often find myself sticking my accessories in my pockets.
Today Western Digital Announced that it has acquired the maker of the best music video ever, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. For those of you who remember, back in 2005 Hitachi Global Storage Technologies came out with the geekiest and hippiest music video ever. Check it out below.
For more information on the aquasition visit: http://www.hitachigst.com/
Western Digital again shipped more disk drives than Seagate in the fourth quarter of 2010, although Seagate’s stronger enterprise presence allowed it to top WD in overall revenue.
WD said Wednesday that it shipped 52.2 million disk drives, versus 48.9 million for Seagate, the third consecutive quarter Western Digital has reigned as the overall leader in disk-drive unit sales.
But Seagate pulled in $150 million in net income and $2.7 billion in revenue, versus WD’s net income of $225 million and revenue of $2.475 billion. Profitability has been historically somewhat rare in the disk-drive market, although the industry has worked hard to keep costs under control.
WD topped analyst estimates for unit sales, although Seagate underperformed. Western Digital was expected to ship 51.5 million HDD units in the fourth quarter, up 1.7 percent from 50.7 million units in the third quarter, iSuppli said on Dec 15. Seagate was expected to ship 49.5 million drives, up 0.6 percent from 49.2 million units during the same period.
Quick unboxing of the WD TV Live Hub a new network attached hub that allows you to stream your content to your television. We will have a full review in about a week so check back soon. Until then enjoy the unboxing.