WD has introduced its new My Passport AV portable media drives (http://www.westerndigital.com/MyPassportAV), which are designed specifically for video storage and playback and come with 320GB of capacity for US$109.99.

A large and increasing number of game consoles, camcorders, TVs, DVRs, Blu-ray players and media players, including the WD TV Media Player family, allow consumers to connect a USB drive and play the multimedia content from the drive on an HD TV. The My Passport AV portable media drive is designed to meet the requirements of this video streaming environment.

The My Passport AV portable media drives operate with the Direct Copy feature offered in Sony's new Handycam video recorders. Direct Copy lets Handycam users offload and archive HD video directly to a My Passport AV portable media drive without a computer, creating room to shoot more HD videos when their Handycam hard drive becomes full.

Consumers can then play back their stored videos using Sony's latest Blu-ray players or any of the WD TV media players by just connecting the My Passport AV portable media drive via the USB port on these players. Specific Handycam and Blu-ray model compatibility information is available on the WD web site.

With its small footprint, the My Passport AV portable media drives are designed to fit neatly in a home entertainment center. The included stand and extra long cable makes it easy to position the drive neatly in entertainment centers, maximizing the airflow and minimizing heat around the drive, says Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group.

My Passport AV portable media drives are formatted FAT32 and are compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 and higher, as well as Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. My Passport AV portable media drives utilize the same drive technology found in WD AV drives inside leading cable and satellite set-top boxes and DVRs (digital video recorders) around the world.