Western Digital has announced a new series of portable hard drives – the My Passport AV-TV series. This series of portable hard drives are intended for media storage, and are built for use with TVs featuring a USB recording function.
The hard drives are, in reality, ordinary 2.5" hard drives with a USB 3.0 interface. That said, while the company didn't quote any specific reading or writing speeds, it might be a reasonable assumption that the drives will feature higher write speeds than budget-oriented drives in order to ensure that almost any TV can write to it fast enough, preventing unhappy customers.
"TV lovers want to enjoy their shows at a time convenient to them," said Jim Welsh, WD executive vice president, Branded Products and Worldwide Sales. "Timeshifting, plus the popularity of global events and international sporting events, is increasing consumer demand for recordable TVs and optimized drives. Our customers want a fast and reliable solution. The high-performance My Passport AV-TV -- specifically-designed for this application -- is the result of their requests."
The units also come with a mounting bracket, which will allow you to mount the drive behind your TV for seamless integration with your media center.
Do note, it is still your TV that will do the recording. The drive itself is no more than a storage medium.
The My Passport AV-TV series drives will come out in 500 GB and 1 TB variants, with no word on pricing just yet.
