Great, just great. Soon after Western Digital made a fool of itself by introducing an external hard drive "certified" for use with DISH Network HD DVRs, along comes Seagate to further fuel the hype machine. Announced at this year's Cable Show (after being mentioned at CES), the Showcase storage solution is "designed" to extend storage capacity of DVRs and media centers. In a similar vein, the outfit's newest drives are "compatible with Motorola's s-SATA-capable HD DVRs," and they also come with USB 2.0 ports and up to 1TB of space. No word on a price or any of that jazz, but those who can't figure out that an external hard drive is an external hard drive can look for 'em to land in Q3.

From what we can tell, this is just marketing hoopla to get you to buy a drive "certified" for use in a particular application; in all actuality, users can connect any USB 2.0 external hard drive to their DISH Network HD DVR and expand their storage capacity for a one-time fee. Nevertheless, Western Digital has just let loose its 500GB My DVR Expander, which "more than doubles" your available recording hours by storing up to 300 hours of SD content and 60 hours of high-def goodness. As predicted, the drives work with the satcaster's ViP family of HD DVRs, and WD is apparently looking to expand the brand to other carriers as soon as they get with the program and enable USB storage. Those willing to fall for this ploy can procure the half-terabyte drive for $149.99, but considering that the port activation fee is still charged, we can't imagine looking elsewhere first.

[Via FarEastGizmos]

We know, no one likes paying extra for those built-in backup features that you reckon are just as easily handled by your own diligence, but TrekStor's latest external hard drive boasts even more fanciness for your hard-earned buck. Aside from coming bundled with Nero's BackItUp2 Essentials, the dashing aluminum drive packs an infrared remote, AV adapter, USB 2.0 connectivity, and a front-panel full of media-centric playback controls for times when the remote mysteriously vanishes. The unit was designed to capture your video files, pictures, and other multimedia, and then plug right in to any television for instant, painless viewing / listening. Additionally, it plays nice with OS X, Linux, and nearly every flavor of Windows, and handles MPEG1/2/4, AVI, DivX, XviD, MP3, WMA, WAV, and OGG file formats all on its own. HD freaks aren't forgotten either, as 720p / 1080i is also in the cards thanks to its component output capabilities, and the optical digital audio output can even pipe surround sound from the HDD to your AV system. The MovieStation maxi t.u comes in 250GB, 320GB, 400GB, and half terabyte sizes, but unfortunately, no pricing deets were readily available just yet.

[Via SvartLinks]