Anyone thinking of getting a Western Digital NAS for sharing or remotely accessing audio and video content will need to take a very close look at what content can be shared before making the purchase. Apparently, Western Digital, a very well known brand of hard disk drives, has made the drastic decision to prohibit the sharing of all the popular audio and video formats on its My Book World Edition series, going by this article on The Register.
The file formats that cannot be shared amongst others include AAC, MP3, OGG and WMA audio files and AVI, DIVX, MOV, MP4, MPG, VOB, QT and WMV video files. According to Western Digital's Support FAQ, these files cannot be shared with different users using the WD Anywhere Access because of unverifiable media license authentication. This basically means that Western Digital has made the decision of what customers can share, regardless of what the customer may actually use the product for.
For example, if you are one of those who loves taking video clips or regularly uses a camcorder, this product would be unsuitable for sharing the footage with friends online as a result of these restrictions.
