WD® Launches New Wireless Streaming Media Player, First to Deliver Spotify® Music Service

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

News provided by

Oct 06, 2011, 07:57 ET

IRVINE, Calif., Oct. 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Western Digital® (NYSE: WDC), 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® Live™ 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.

WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading OEMs, systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

Western Digital, WD, the WD logo, WD TV, and My Book are registered trademarks in the U.S. and other countries; WD TV Live, WD TV Live Hub, and My Book Live are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products may be available in all regions of the world. All product and packaging specifications subject to change without notice. The term of your limited warranty depends on the country in which your product was purchased. Please visit our web site at http://support.wdc.com/warranty for the detailed terms and conditions of our limited warranty and for a list of the specific countries in these regions. As used for storage capacity, one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.

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.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20111006/LA81489)

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20000711/WDCLOGO)

SOURCE Western Digital Technologies