UPDATED 12:19 EDT / OCTOBER 06 2011

NEWS

Western Digital TV Live Set-Top Box Brightens Your Living Room with Spotify

The living room cloud is dominated primarily by one device that has usurped the much vaunted place of the Victorian fireplace in the middle class home: the television. As a result, a large number of devices have risen in an ecosystem to take advantage of this position in the home and its place of honor in the minds of many customers. Western Digital hasn’t been sitting still while companies like Microsoft (with the Xbox), Apple, Google, Boxee, and others.

Music is a huge part of the living room cloud and a part of our daily lives, so when I heard that the new WD TV would support Spotify, I sat up to listen. According to sources, Western Digital’s new set-top box will be bringing this capability to the U.S. where previous users could only get Spotify streaming in Sweden and Finland via TeliaSonera cable.

GigaOM has broken this news and even filmed a hands-on video of the new product for would-be buyers.

The new version is a tiny little box that sports only two USB slots and no internal storage. Instead, the new WD TV Live box has eschewed storage for its Spotify service. Users seeking some sort of storage may do so by using USB storage devices (of which there are many) and could use this as a way to directly deliver content to their TV—of course, the WD TV Live box may also connect via Ethernet or Wi-Fi to the home network and can stream media from local computers.

WD TV also has partnered with other media outlets for Internet TV and music streaming such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Pandora.

Be warned, though, only people who have signed up for the Spotify Premium service (~$10 USD) may stream to their WD TV Live box.


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