New WD TV Live Adds Breakthrough New Media Streaming Service to Menu of Premium Entertainment Content

Western Digital, the world’s leader in external storage solutions and maker of the popular WD TV media player family, today introduced the next generation of its WD TV Live streaming media player, an easy to use Wi-Fi enabled media player that is the first in its category to deliver the Spotify^® music service.

WD TV Live features WD’s newest intuitive user interface that delivers the latest hit movies, TV shows, music and online services from companies like Netflix, Hulu Plus and Blockbuster directly to your TV. The new streaming media player connects to the Internet wirelessly or through an Ethernet connection, with the high performance 802,11n wireless connectivity supporting Full-HD 1080p video resolution.

In addition to premium Internet content, WD TV Live allows users to enjoy personal media such as photos, video and music on their home entertainment systems by supporting a wide range of file formats for streaming content from any connected USB drive, digital camcorder or camera, network drive such as the My Book^® LiveTM personal cloud storage, and any networked PC or Mac^® computer in the home.

Adding to the WD TV family’s current content offerings from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Blockbuster, CinemaNow, Pandora, YouTube, Facebook^® and many others, WD TV Live and WD TV Live Hub are the first streaming media players to deliver Spotify’s acclaimed music service. Premium Spotify subscribers can now enjoy unlimited on-demand access to Spotify’s catalog of over 15 million songs in excellent sound quality (available in up to 320kbps) on their home entertainment system.

WD incorporates Spotify’s popular features in the new service, including the ability to create and manage Spotify playlists, share songs to Spotify friends, and see and subscribe to friends’ playlists via their Spotify profiles. Users can also share tracks by sending songs directly to other Spotify users’ inboxes. Spotify for WD TV Live and WD TV Live Hub delivers an exciting new way to enjoy and share music on the best sound system in your home.

«WD is committed to providing our customers with a premium entertainment experience that includes seamless streaming of personal media and the best of the Internet directly to the highest quality screen and sound system in the home,” said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager for WD’s Branded Products and Consumer Electronics groups. «By marrying advanced features of the new wireless WD TV Live with quality content from service providers, including a first of its kind service with Spotify, we are excited to deliver on that commitment.”

Pascal de Mul, Global Head of Hardware Partnerships, Spotify, commented: «We’re really excited to make further steps into the living room with the streaming media players from Western Digital, which from today offer the full Spotify streaming catalog in a truly innovative TV-focused user experience.”

In addition to Spotify and WD’s current content offerings, WD TV Live and WD TV Live Hub will also now include the Dailymotion video service. The application offers quality video content from users, independent content creators and premium partners, including high-quality and HD video.

Price and Availability
The new WD TV Live streaming media player can be purchased at select retailers worldwide and online at wdstore.com. MSRP for the WD TV Live streaming media player is $99,99 USD. Spotify is now available on the new WD TV Live players, as well as the WD TV Live Hub streaming media player, which features a built-in 1 TB hard drive to store personal content locally for TV streaming. The Spotify service is available in eight countries: USA, UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, France, The Netherlands and Spain.

About WD
WD, one of the storage industry’s pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company designs and produces reliable, high-performance hard drives and solid state drives that keep users’ data accessible and secure from loss. Its advanced technologies are configured into applications for client and enterprise computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics, as well as its own consumer storage and home entertainment products.

About Spotify
Spotify is an award-winning digital music service that gives you on-demand access to over 15 million tracks. Our dream is to make all the world’s music available instantly to everyone, wherever and whenever they want it. Spotify makes it easier than ever to discover, manage and share music with your friends, while making sure that artists get a fair deal. Spotify is available in eight countries: USA, UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, France, The Netherlands and Spain, with more than 10 million registered users, and over 2 million paying subscribers.

The player was well reviewed when it launched in 2006, and it grabbed as much as 10 percent of the market for media players. But enthusiasm faded, and the Zune has become one of many failed iPod wannabes.

Microsoft Corp. hasn’t released a major update to the line in two years. Some of the look and functionality of the Zune has been moved over to Microsoft’s smartphone software, which it says «will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy.”

Microsoft says it will continue to support existing players.

Well, 1985 it isn’t anymore that you can be sure of and in today’s modern technological-filled world, the demands of the humble, but powerful computer are more and more.

Being able to use these on a massive screen that the goggle-box offers is more than desirable it seems.

Hastily hitting the scenes now is the Android built and operated Himedia Media Player which is going to offer new possibilities for those who demand convenience and accessibility to the other technologies around them.

It will offer the advantages of being able to use all your Android favourites like games from Angry Birds and other available apps all from the convenience of a big TV screen when it’s connected up.

The Himedia Media Player can be used to access and display all kinds of content from the internet and it can even do this via another computer which is located inside the house, making the possibilities of BitTorrent downloading and video or music streaming easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

Connect the hardware up to the TV by use of the included connectors of HDMI, USB 3,0, gigabit Ethernet, composite, coax and optical audio — the Himedia Media Player is your key to plug ‘n play it seems.

For wire-haters, there is also a wireless model available and space to bung in a hard drive of your own if desired.

All this comes at only $160, which is a pretty darn good price tag for all the capabilities the Himedia Media Player offers.

The ZebMate Cinema 3,0+ takes the Zebronics product portfolio into a new market segment of high quality in low cost and a simple, intuitive user interface. It has 4GB memory in-built, a micro-SD card slot that enables capacity to be expanded by up to 16GB. The Lithium polymer battery offers uninterrupted play of up to 9,5 hours for audio and 2,5 hours for video, long enough to enjoy a full movie without a break for re-charging. The 3,0-inch colour TFT screen has 400×240 pixel resolution — a 720P for video. The Zebmate Cinema 3,0+ supports most of the video and audio formats like mpeg-1/2, mpeg4 xvid, divx, h263/264, wmv9/vc-1, rmvb, mp3, wma, ogg, flac, ape, aac, ac3, atra, dts. The pack includes high-quality in-ear phones connectible to the player via a standard 3,5mm stereo jack. In an add-on, the player also has the TV-out function with 720p video format — making it a perfect player to be connected to a LCD TV.

Other accessories included are charger, neck band and carrying pouch.

The Archos A14VG features a 1,4 inch display, 4GB of storage and a built in FM tuner, whilst the A15VS Vision is one of Archos’s thinnest portable media players measuring just 6mm thick.

The Archos A30VC features a 3 inch touchscreen display and a built in camera and comes with 8GB of storage. The Archos A43VB Vison features a 4,3 inch touchscreen display, has 8GB of built in memory and also comes with a microSD card slot.

Pricing starts at $47 for the Archos A14VG, $54 for the A15VS, $122 for the Archos A30VC and 136 for the Archos A43VB.