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Archive for the 'Western Digital' Tag

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Add 2-terabytes of capacity to a DVR (that’s 250 hours of HD!)

November 4th, 2009, 12:45 pm by

Apricorn DVR Expander in 2 TB.Spreading the word: Apricorn just announced a two-terabyte DVR expander. The catch: It’s for DirecTV DVRs.

The Poway-based Apricorn says that two terabytes can boost a DVR’s capacity by 250 hours of high-definition recordings or 1,124 hours of standard definition video. (Just did the math — you can record TV 24/7 for nearly seven weeks!)

The DVR Expander is available in capacities of 1 TB for $129; 1.5 TB for $199; and 2 TB for $259.  It plugs into the DirecTV DVR’s eSATA port. But when you power it up, you won’t be able to access recordings on the actual DVR. To do so, users must disconnect the DVR Expander and restart the DVR.

Apricorn tells me that the new device is not compatible with TiVo. It was released specifically for these DirecTV DVR receivers: HR20, HR21, HR22 and HR23. More details at Apricorn’s site HERE.

The company does offer DVR expanders for other DVRs that have eSATA or USB ports. But those devices only go up to 1.5 TBs. Here’s a link to other models.

Other companies that offer DVR expanders include Lake Forest’s Western Digital, which has expanders for DVRs with enabled eSATA or USB ports. That pretty much excludes cable TV company DVRs but does include TiVos. Seagate Technology also has a 1-TB DVR expander that works with Dish Network receivers.

More on gadgets:

Posted in: Gadgets • Video & TV • • • • • • • | 1 Comment »

Western Digital HD gadget gets more web TV to home’s HDTV

October 13th, 2009, 8:25 am by

UPDATE, 11:52 a.m.: Western Digital confirms its new media player won’t play videos from Hulu or Netflix either. Also, more pics, see below.

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Western Digital WD TV LiveLake Forest hard drive maker takes another stab at the TV market with today’s release of the WD TV Live HD media player.

There’s a major upgrade on the new player: It can stream YouTube videos, Flickr slide shows or other high-definition Internet content on a home’s big-screen TV.

While such media-sharing devices have been around for years, the Western Digital gadget is built for 1080p HD video. Last year’s model was novel and worked well, but in order to play HD video, users had to transfer videos to a USB key or external drive and then plug it into the gadget.

The new gadget still resembles a miniature “MyBook,” the company’s line of external PC hard drives that look like black books. It’s very small — about 4-by-5 inches and 1.5-inches thick — so it’s pretty unobtrusive. It connects straight into a big TV via the HDMI port (an RCA jack and other components are also available).

Western Digital WD TV Live

Western Digital WD TV LiveMore people are discovering free videos online, not just with YouTube, but sites like Hulu.com, Fancast.com, Joost.com and Veoh.com that offer full-length TV shows and movies. But few devices allow access to everything available.

Western Digital’s is no different. The press release mentions that the Western Digital device allows access to YouTube, Flickr and Pandora. However, in the product specifications, the media player “Does not support protected premium content such as movies or music from the iTunes Store, Cinema Now, Movielink, Amazon Unbox, and Vongo.” No mention of Netflix Streaming either.

UPDATE, 11:52 a.m.: Western Digital confirms this won’t play videos from Hulu either or Netflix. Here are some images of what the software looks like on the TV. Click to enlarge:

Western Digital's new WD TV Live screenshot of slide show with audio in the background. Western Digital's new WD TV Live screenshot showing Internet radio Pandora.

I’m hoping to test this out soon to get a good feel of what it really can and can’t do. The WD TV Live HD is available at the company’s store for $149.99.

Earlier on TV gadgets:

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Posted in: Gadgets • Video & TV • • • • • • • • • | 19 Comments »

Western Digital adds 140-600 hours to TiVo, DVRs

April 22nd, 2009, 8:00 pm by

Western Digital's My DVR ExpanderJust a quick note: Western Digital in Lake Forest added a 1-terabyte drive to its line of “My DVR Expander” products.  It’s an external hard drive that plugs in to a TiVo or other compatible digital video recorder and immediately adds room for up to 140 more hours of high-definition TV shows and movies. That also translates to about 600 more hours of standard definition. Nice! 

The latest model works with TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD DVRs, using an eSATA connection. Price: $199.99 and available at shopwd.com.

Unfortunately, My Expander doesn’t work with every brand of DVR, especially if the DVR is from the cable company. But according to Western Digital, it’s “been tested for compatibility with Scientific Atlanta 8300 Series, and has been TiVo verified compatible with TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs.” 

An older 500-gigabyte model with USB connections is also available. That one appears to work with DISH Network’s ViP Series HD DVRs, according to the company.

More TV: Check out the Gadgetress Guide to local TV services. Latest DVR headlines:

Posted in: Storage • Video & TV • • • • • • • | 3 Comments »

When cameraphones and O.C. tech mix, expect prizes

March 10th, 2009, 6:00 pm by

If you like taking funny photos or entertaining videos with your cameraphone, submit them for a chance to win everything but a cell phone in a new wireless contest sponsored by Fountain Valley’s Kingston Technology Co. and friends.

The memory company plans to give away a bunch of memory cards and flash drives, while neighbor D-Link Systems has a 10-inch digital photo frame and wireless routers up for grabs. Western Digital, in Lake Forest, is tossing in one of those nifty WD TV HD Media players, and Plantronics has a few 925 Bluetooth headsets.

The contest categories are: dance/pose, fun pet tricks, travel/vacation and sports. There will be 32 prizes awarded.

All entries must be received by March 31. Photo submissions can be made at www.kingston.com/mobile while video submissions are accepted at www.youtube.com/kingstoncontest.

Prizes are listed below: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Cell phones • • • • • • • • | 1 Comment »

Western Digital launches first 2 TB drive

January 27th, 2009, 8:02 am by

Way back when, Western Digital followed the competition and took forever to get to a 1 Terabyte drive in 2007. Today, the Lake Forest company introduced the industry’s first 2 TB hard drive.

The new desktop computer hard drive crammed 500/GB per platter in the 4-platter drive. (Other details: It has 32 MB cache, 400 Gigabits/square inch in aerial density and it’s one of the company’s Eco drives, which uses less power than traditional drives.)  

Who really needs this much space (besides myself)? The company points to Trend Focus, a market research firm that covers the storage space. Its president, Mark Geenan, says that while some wondered if consumers would buy a 1 TB drive, 10 percent of the 3.5-inch hard drives sales are 1 TB or higher. 

And, according to WD’s handy “What it holds” chart, I think we could easily run out of space if it only holds 240 hours of high-definition video: 

Up to 571,000 digital photos
Up to 500,000 songs (MP3)
Up to 50,000 songs (uncompressed CD quality)
Up to 150 hours of Digital Video (DV)
Up to 880 hours of DVD quality video
Up to 240 hours of HD video

The new WD Caviar Green 2 TB drive (model WD20EADS) is now available at a suggested price of $299, which makes it a budget-worthy 15-cents per gigabyte!

Read a preliminary review of the new drive at HotHardware.com: “WD 2TB Caviar Green Monster Drive Preview.”

Past Western Digital stories: 

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Western Digital offers way to watch PC’s HD movies on TV

November 3rd, 2008, 8:25 am by

Problem: Lots of high-def videos and movies stored on your home computer or external hard drive but no simple way to play them on the big TV in the living room. 

Answer: The Western Digital WD TV Media Player. The Lake Forest hard drive maker just announced its new gadget that stays connected to the TV. When you want to play video files from a hard drive, just plug in the hard drive to the Media player, select the file and hit play — up to two USB drives at a time. 

This sounds much neater than wiring up a laptop to the TV for that cluttered home electronics look. But then again, it’s not perfect. It’s not a networked gadget so you’ll need to transfer all those PC video files to a hard drive instead of trying to access the files on your home network. And too bad it’s not wireless. It appears to be much like many other media players that have been on the market for years, but this one allows you to plug in a hard drive or two. Plus, it’s HD — up to 1080p resolution. 

The system comes with a remote control and will let users watch photo slideshows and listen to music too. It also comes with ArcSoft MediaConverter 2.5 to convert photos, video and music into formats optimized for the WD TV HD Media player. It’s available now at shopwd.com for $129.99.

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Western Digital adds build-your-own storage

September 30th, 2008, 11:27 am by

How much space do 400 hours¹ of digital video need? About 7-cubed inches if you get Western Digital’s new storage box with 4-terabytes of capacity.

Announced today from the Lake Forest hard drive company, the WD ShareSpace is also fast — with transfer speeds of up to one gigabit per second when connected to a gigabit-Ethernet network. Translation: It’ll take 37.6 seconds to transfer a loaded DVD to the drive (ideal conditions, of course).

The system stands out because of a few features: It has WD’s GreenPower, so it uses up to 33 percent less power than other systems.

And you can add up to four desktop hard drives so if the current storage fills up, just take out the full drive and slide a new one in. And when drives get larger, it will accept the bigger sizes.

However, Western Digital says that if you add a non-WD hard drive to the case, it won’t work. There are software issues, says the company.

Such drive enclosures aren’t new for the industry — D-Link and Netgear have offered one for years — but this is rare for a Western Digital Product.

Lots of details on WD ShareSpace features and specs HERE.

The 2 TB version is $699.99, the 4 TB is $999.99. Both are available but the 4 TB is sold out at Western Digital’s online store. It should be available next week.

1. From WD’s site: The DV format, regardless of its mode (miniDV, DVCAM, DVC-Pro) has a data rate of approximately 25mb/s (mega-bits per second). In storage terms, this translates to approximately 3.5MB/s (Megabytes per second) or 13GB/hr (Gigabytes per hour)

Images from Western Digital

Related posts:

Posted in: Storage • • • • | 2 Comments »

New WD drive starts at 27.5 cents per gigabyte

June 18th, 2008, 10:45 am by

Western Digital My Book Mirror EditionThe price of technology always tumbles. But it’s still incredible to me that something that cost me $250 for 2 gigabytes a decade ago now costs 29 cents per gig!

That’s what Western Digital offers with its new My Book Mirror Edition, announced today. I remember documenting the Lake Forest’s company other hard drive feats: Reaching 100 gigabytes in 2001, attracting fans with its 200 GB ‘Drivezilla” in 2002, and finally hitting the 1 terabyte mark (that’s approximately 1,000 gigs) last year.

The new external USB My Book includes software to automatically backs up photos, music, and other computer files. It’s called the ‘Mirror Edition’ because it has two drives — one to back up items, the other to back up the back up. In other words, it’s configured to be a RAID 1 system.

At $290 for the 1 terabyte or $550 for the 2-terabyte capacity, the My Book is, respectively, 29 cents and 27.5 cents per gig.

This isn’t the cheapest out there. By the time the drive is widely available in stores, prices are likely to drop. At the moment, another Western Digital My Book 1 TB drive at Amazon is $199, or 20-cents per gig. And a special at Buy.com this week advertised a 500 GB drive from Fantom for $69.99, or 14-cents per gig.

Prices continue to drop because of technology improvements and competition. While companies like Western Digital and Seagate Technologies still dominate in the hard-disk drive space, they’re competing with many small players who target a niche, such as laptop drives, portable drives or drives for large business users. But since Western Digital maintains its own manufacturing and assembly plants, it says that its costs are lower than the competition. That means it can pass the savings to the consumer.

Another money-saving benefit of the new drives, they use WD’s GreenPower technology, an energy-efficient system with better cooling and no fan so it consumes 33 percent less power than comparable systems (ie: save even more money electricity bills).

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