Western Digital entered the digital media player market this week with the introduction of the new WD TV HD Media Player. The unit plays back digital media content stored on external USB drives directly onto an HDTV set. WD TV HD Media Player will work with most USB hard drives that can be recognized as a USB mass storage device (although Western Digital would like you to think that you should really couple it with the Passport drives).

The device plays back music, videos, and photos with support for the following file formats:

• Music - MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA
• Photo - JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG
• Video -MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264)

The player also supports 1080p playback of MPEG2/4, H.264, and WMV9 files at 24 fps; 1080i playback at 30fps, and 720p playback at 60fps. The built-in AAC/Dolby Digital decoder supports 2 channel output – if you want surround sound support, you’ll need to route the digital audio out to an A/V receiver or something that decodes multi-channel surround sound audio.

According to the product page, other features include:

Advanced navigation

• Thumbnail and list views – Browse content by filename or by thumbnails of photos, album covers and movie cover art.
• Media Library – Allows you to view all your media by media type in one menu regardless of its location in folders or drives.View  content by categories such as genre, album, artist and date.
• Search – Search by genre, title, artist, filename and partial filename.

Photo viewing

• Create custom slide shows with a variety of transitions and background music
• Zoom and pan
• Search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date

Movie viewing

• Fast forward, rewind, pause, zoom, and pan
• View subtitles
• Search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date

Music playback

• Fast forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, repeat
• Search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date

You can also connect and access two USB drives simultaneously.

Ports include HDMI, and composite outputs.

The suggested retail price for the WD TV HD Media Player is $129.99.

[Check it out via eHomeUpgrade]

Technorati Tags: Western Digital, WD TV HD Media Player

Notebook hard drives are certainly catching up to desktop hard drives as Western Digital announced that they’ve begun shipping 500GB WD Scorpio Blue 2.5 inch hard drives. The WD Scorpio Blue drives utilize 250GB per platter technology and will also be available in 400GB capacities. Other specs include:

• 3 Gb/s transfer rate
• WhisperDrive technology makes this drive one of the quietest 5400 RPM 2.5 inch drives out there
• ShockGuard technology
• IntelliSeek technology calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration

The new WD Scorpio Blue 500GB drive (model WD5000BEVT) and 400GB drive (model WD4000BEVT) will be available for $219.99 and $189.99 respectively.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Western Digital, Scorpio Blue 500GB, WD5000BEVT, WD4000BEVT

Got some Westinghouse Digital PR materials today via e-mail and I thought I’d pass it along to all of you. The company has two LCD based HDTV sets that might interest someone looking for a new display at home. One is a full HD 42 inch LCD panel while the other is a much smaller 16 inch flip-style LCD display perfect for environments like the kitchen.

First up - there’s the Westinghouse TX-42F430S:

• 1080p resolution (1920×1080)
• Built-in ATSC/NTSC/ClearQAM tuner
• All inputs support 1080p including component
• 5000:1 contrast ratio
• Four HDMI inputs
• Automatic source detection and switching
• Built-in 5 band equalizer
• Energy Saving Mode
• Advanced Video Adjustments
• Measures 42.2 x 29 x 10.5 inches and weighs 68.1 lbs

Now if you’re looking to hang up a display in the kitchen, then you should check out the Westinghouse PT-16H610S display. Features include:

• Dual-hinged flip-style design
• Can sit on counter-top, be mounted on a wall, or on the bottom of a cabinet
• Full 180 degree rotation of the front bezel
• 1080p HDMI input support
• 1366 x 768 resolution with 16.7 million color support
• 500:1 contrast ratio
• 90 degree horizontal viewing angle and 65 degree vertical viewing angle
• Measures 15 x 11.3 x 7 inches and weighs 7.7 lbs

Technorati Tags: Westinghouse TX-42F430S, PT-16H610S

Western Digital launched a new line of WD Caviar Black 7200 RPM 3.5 inch SATA hard drives on Tuesdays. These drives are designed for high performance desktops, workstations, and multi-drive systems and come in two capacities - 750GB and 1TB.

Features of the WD Caviar Black 7200 RPM drives include:

• Dual processor
• 32 MB cache
• StableTrac - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.
• NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

The Caviar Black joins the Caviar Blue and Caviar Green drive product lines. The Blue Drives are WD’s standard hard drives that balance performance and reliability while the Green Drives utilize WD’s GreenPower technology for cool, quiet, power-efficient performance.

The new Caviar Black drives will be available next week with the 750GB model going for $199 and the 1TB model going for $249.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Western Digital, Caviar Black, 750GB, 1TB

Western Digital announced their next generation “Raptor” series of hard drives in the form of the new 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor drives. These drives offer twice the performance and 35 percent performance increases over previous models from Western Digital. The WD VelociRaptor offer 300GB of storage space in a 2.5 inch enterprise form factor. The drive is then enclosed in a 3.5 inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink dubbed the “IcePack”. This allows the 2.5 inch drive to fit in 3.5 inch drive bays and also stay cool while operating at high speeds.

Features of the WD VelociRaptor include:

• 10,000 RPM
• SATA 3Gb/s interface
• 16MB cache
• 1.4 million hours MTBF
• Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) - optimizes performance when drives are in vibration-prone multi-drive chassis
• SecurePark - parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off.
• 5 year limited warranty

So when do you get your chance to play with the WD VelociRaptor? Well, according to Western Digital, the VelociRaptor (model WD3000GLFS) will be available in Alienware’s high performance ALX gaming desktop by the end of April.  The drive will be available exclusively through Alienware for all of this month and then will be available through the online WD store and through resellers by the middle of May. MSRP for the 300GB VelociRaptor is $299.99.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Western Digital, WD, VelociRaptor,