SanDisk introduces the promising and simple Sansa TakeTV player today -- a simple thumb drive that lets you lift video off your computer and play it on your TV.
SanDisk also wants to help you find stuff to watch. So it is simultaneously unveiling a beta version of Fanfare, its new online video distribution platform. The site will have both paid and free content, and SanDisk hopes it will eventually be a place you can go to catch up on all your favorite shows. For now, there's limited fare from CBS (e.g. CSI: Miami, "Survivor-Fiji"), Showtime (Fat Actress, Brotherhood), as well as content from Smithsonian Networks, TVGuide, The Weather Channel and the Jaman movie service.
SanDisk is best known as the inventor and world's largest supplier of flash data memory storage cards. Only Apple sells more portable digital music and video players than SanDisk's Sansa line of portable devices -- a lot more, of course.
With TakeTV, SanDisk is set to compete with Apple and others in another emerging digital battleground — the business of lifting video content off a computer and onto a television.
The gadget consists of a small (roughly 4½-inch tall, 1½-inch wide) USB stick onto which you drag and drop video files from a PC, just as you copy files onto a regular flash drive.
After doing so, you slip the stick into a cradle you connect to your TV (via either a "Composite" or "S-Video" connection). And then you hit play on the simple TakeTV remote control, which is revealed only after pulling the stick apart.
A 4 gigabyte TakeTV version (offering about 5-hours of video playback) costs $100; an 8GB, (10 hour) version fetches $150. TakeTV can't handle high definition content at this early stage. Out of the gate it supports the MPEG-4, DivX and xVid video formats.
Stay tuned for announcements from other content partners—and a hands-on review by yours truly.
By Edward C. Baig
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