The Media Center, branded by

Western Digital Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology produc ...

, is a 7,200-

rpm Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl ...

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...

(either 160 GB or 250GB), combined with a reader of

CompactFlash CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994. CompactFlash became one of the most successful of the e ...

Type I and II,

Microdrive The Microdrive is a registered trademark for miniature, 1-inch hard disks produced by IBM and Hitachi. These rotational media storage devices were designed to fit in CompactFlash (CF) Type II slots. The release of similar drives by other ...

Memory Stick The Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, originally launched by Sony in late 1998. In addition to the original Memory Stick, this family includes the Memory Stick PRO, a revision that allows greater maximum storage capacity an ...

, Memory Stick Pro, MultiMediaCard,

Secure Digital Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices. The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between SanD ...

, and

SmartMedia SmartMedia is an obsolete flash memory card standard owned by Toshiba, with capacities ranging from 2 MB to 128 MB. The format mostly saw application in the early 2000s in digital cameras and audio production. SmartMedia memory cards a ...

media. It can use either FireWire or

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

to interface with a

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

(Farrance, 2004). Although branded as a Media Center this product is not a traditional media center and is nothing but a storage device and cannot actually play any media to a TV or Monitor. It must be plugged into a computer using the appropriate software to play any media.

Current products

The product is now called

WD TV The WD TV is a consumer device that was produced by Western Digital which plays videos, images, and music from USB drives or network locations. The device was introduced in 2008 and played high-definition video through an HDMI port, and standa ...

, and supports Netflix, Pandora, and other services. The upgraded version, the WD TV Hub Live, supports Mediafly, Pandora, YouTube, Blockbuster, and Netflix. It comes with a 1 terabyte internal hard drive and can sync media using a "watched folders" paradigm from either a Mac or a PC. It does not support wi-fi natively, but this can be remedied by purchasing an adapter. Seagate, Viewsonic and

Iomega Iomega (later LenovoEMC) produced external, portable, and networked data storage products. Established in the 1980s in Roy, Utah, United States, Iomega sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks, including the Zip drive floppy ...

have similar media hard drives that can be plugged into a TV. They generally support Netflix, but few other services. The

Roku Roku ( ) is a brand of hardware digital media players manufactured by American company Roku, Inc. They offer access to streaming media content from online services. The first Roku model, developed in collaboration with Netflix, was introduced ...

has a USB port on one of its models which can be used with an external hard drive. The WD TV Hub Live does syncing, which makes it a

DLNA Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA; originally named Digital Home Working Group, DHWG) was founded by a group of PC and consumer electronics companies in June 2003 (with Intel in the lead role) to develop and promote a set of interoperability ...

-compliant

media extender A digital media player (also sometimes known as a streaming device or streaming box) is a type of consumer electronics device designed for the storage, playback, or viewing of digital media content. They are typically designed to be integr ...

, as well as a hard drive and streaming device. The WD Live doesn't have this feature.

References

*Farrance, R. (2004). Storage options merge into one box. Retrieved January 14, 2003 from http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114272,tk,dn011304X,00.asp * http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20020790-17.html?tag=mncol;6n

External links

Center Digital Media
{{Western Digital Hard disk drives Western Digital products

Current products

See also

References

External links