Hasta La Gadget!

Seagate unveiled three new products on Wednesday at CES: the FreeAgent Theater HD media player, a complete home theater system; the Showcase DVR Expander, 500GB of capacity for your DVR; and the Pipeline HD Series, two new hard drives for DVRs.

The Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD media player (above) is a new accessory made to work with the award-winning FreeAgent Go portable hard drive. It lets people easily store digital media, including videos, photos, and music, and play it directly on their TVs, rather than computer monitors.

One feature that makes the Seagate FreeAgent Theater so easy to use is the number of supported audio and video formats. It media player supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats, and DIVX files with video resolutions for NTSC, PAL and HD up to 1080i–and even provides support for subtitles.

Available in March, the Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD media player can be purchased as a standalone unit for use with any USB storage device, or a complete solution with a FreeAgent Go portable drive included, starting at $129.99.

More new Seagate products after the jump.

We’re going to give you just a moment to sit back and peer at the image above, and we’ll politely remind you that this object was likely designed in the year 2008. For whatever reason, Seagate has chosen just about the ugliest design imaginable and applied it to its Free Agent Theater HD, though word on the street is that the user interface is actually a horse of a different color. The drive is simply a multimedia HDD that enables users to pop drives in that are full of digital media for easy viewing on the TV. It’s expected to drop in March for $229.99 (250GB) / $299.99 (500GB), or those on a tight budget (or Free Agent Go HDD owners, actually) can opt for a $129.99 media player / remote control-only version. A very strange demo video is hosted just after the break.

[Via Notebooks]

Continue reading Video: Seagate introduces Free Agent Theater HD, designs it like a Betamax player

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Storage

Video: Seagate introduces Free Agent Theater HD, designs it like a Betamax player originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Around 1.5 years ago, we were all sitting around in awe of the ultra-dense Barracuda 7200.10. Now, Seagate has doubled up on that gigabyte-per-platter milestone with the Barracuda 7200.12. As of this week, the desktop hard drive with the industry’s highest areal density (329 Gigabits per square inch, for those curious) is shipping, as the firm’s engineers have somehow figured out how to squeeze 500GB onto a single disk. The 3.5-inch 7,200RPM drive touts a SATA interface, a sustained data rate of up to 160MB/second and a burst speed of 3Gb/second. It’s available as we speak in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities, though there’s no telling how much coin you’ll be asked to lay down in order to take home the bragging rights.

[Via TG Daily]

Filed under: Storage

Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.12 HD packs 500GB per platter originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll wager you didn’t know Macworld was going on today, did you? Pathetic jokes aside, Western Digital has lined up a pair of launches today in San Francisco to coincide with Apple’s final Macworld keynote, as we’re treated to the My Passport for Mac portable HDD and the My Book Mac Edition. Truthfully, the only real difference between these drives and their vanilla counterparts is the pre-format process; with these, they both come “pre-formatted for Mac,” saving you the tiresome task of converting ’em to HFS+ Journaled yourself. Additionally, these USB 2.0 drives are made to work “seamlessly” with Apple’s Time Machine backup software, and they’ll arrive in capacities including 320GB and 500GB (My Passport) / 1TB (My Book). Both units should be available now for between $129.99 and $179.99.

Filed under: Storage

WD pumps out My Passport for Mac / My Book Mac Edition originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Two new ones have arrived today from the labs of LaCie, and neither are destined to ever end up inside of your PC. Up first, we’ve got the slightly speedier d2 external DVD±RW drive with LightScribe, which toasts discs at up to 22x and connects to PCs via USB 2.0 or FireWire (400, presumably). For those in need of HDD-based storage, the glossy black Hard Disk MAX comes with a pair of 1TB drives that can be set in either a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration with the simple flick of a switch on the back panel. There’s also a USB port on the front for additional expansion, and the USB 2.0 socket ’round back is what links it up with your computer. Both are available right now for $119.99 / $269.99, respectively.

Read – d2 external DVD burner
Read – Hard Disk MAX

Filed under: Storage

LaCie intros 22x d2 external DVD burner, 2TB Hard Disk MAX originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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