Western Digital recently strayed from its platter-based roots and released an HD media streaming unit. The WD TV HD Media Player claims to "turn your USB drive into an HD media player, allowing you to watch your favorite HD movies on your TV." Basically, it allows you to plug in your USB key or USB hard drive and play back multimedia clips up to 1080p on your HDTV. The unit works via the HDMI / composite outputs. The box is sized at 1.6- x 4.9- x 3.9-inches and is priced at $129.99. The company unveiled the product with little fanfare, as it’s already sitting on store shelves.

The first 320GB 2.5 inch HD out of the gate is Western Digital’s 320GB Scorpio. It is purported to be "one of the quietest 5400 RPM, 2.5-inch drives available," with WD’s trademark WhisperDrive and IntelliSeek technology promising to keep the noise down and the power consumption to a minimum. It will take $200 to put this baby into your laptop, but expect to see them as a pre-installed option soon.