Western Digital Announces External Media Drive

Nowadays, many media recording and playback devices, such as camcorders, TVs, DVRs, and Blu-ray players, use external storage devices for storage. If you own one of those and wonder which storage device is most compatible with it, Western Digital might have what you're looking for.

The company announced Wednesday the new My Passport AV portable media drive that's designed to store digital content for digital media players and recorders. According to company representatives, the new drive "delivers the formatting and low-power consumption that assures out-of-the-box compatibility with many leading consumer electronics devices."

WD assures that the My Passport AV portable media drive has been tested to operate seamlessly with the Direct Copy feature offered in Sony's new Handycam video recorders. Direct Copy lets Handycam users archive HD video directly to a USB external storage device without a computer, creating room for more videos when the camcorder's internal storage becomes full.

The video stored on the My Passport AV can then be played back using either Sony's latest Blu-ray players or any other digital players, such as the WD TV or WD TV Live. WD says that not all models of the Handycam and Blu-ray players are supported by the My Passport AV, though most of them are. A list of supported devices can be found at WD's Web site.

Other than that, the new My Passport AV shares a similar design with other My Passport portable hard drives that WD has released before, such as the My Passport Studio. It comes with only one USB 2.0 port, which serves as both a data and a power connection.