Sansa TakeTV: A First Look

Looking for an easy way to take videos from your computer and watch them on your TV? There are certainly a variety of solutions to that problem available today, whether you decide to burn a DVD, build a media PC, or use one of the myriad of wireless streaming devices on the market. Those solutions all work, but SanDisk has created an even easier way to get the job done. Enter the Sansa TakeTV Video Player. SanDisk turned to the simple USB thumb drive for inspiration and came away with the simplest way yet to get downloaded television and movie content where it belongs: your TV. Watching downloaded/digitized video content on your TV has never been easier.

What Is TakeTV

TakeTV is a pocket-sized device that comes with three pieces – the main USB unit, a remote control, and a TV cradle. The main unit looks and works just like a thumb drive. You connect it to your computer by plugging it into your computer’s USB drive. When not in use, the main unit slips into the remote control making for a tidy, portable package that can easily fit in a pocket. The remote itself is very thin with a large Play button and smaller membrane-like buttons for navigating file menus, controlling sub-titles, etc. The third piece is the TV cradle that attaches directly to your television.

The TakeTV comes in two varieties: a 4-gigabyte version for $99.99 that can hold approximately 5 hours of video and an 8-gigabyte version for $149.99 that holds about 10 hours of video.

How TakeTV Works

Using the TakeTV is extremely easy. Here’s everything you need to know in 3 easy steps.

1. Connect the cradle to your TV. The cradle has an attached cable with audio/video plugs to attach to your TV and/or your receiver. Audio is very basic – just a right and left RCA plug. Video can be attached either via the yellow composite/RCA plug or with the S-video plug. The cradle will also need power, so plug in the included AC adapter.
2. Put videos on the TakeTV. Plug the main TakeTV unit into an available USB slot on your computer. Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac, and Linux are all supported. The computer should recognize the TakeTV as an external drive. To add videos to the TakeTV, just drag and drop videos to the “external drive,” exactly as you would with a regular USB thumb drive.
3. Watch videos on your TV. Disconnect the main TakeTV unit from your PC and plug it into the TV cradle. Make sure your TV is on the correct video input and you’re ready to go. Use the remote control to browse the available files, select a file, and begin watching the video.

For a demo of the TakeTV in action, take a look at this link.

Getting Video Content

The TakeTV works with MPEG-4, DivX, and XviD video files, so you’ll need to make sure your videos are in the appropriate format. If your video is in an unsupported format, you can certainly make use of one of the many encoder/converter programs freely available to put your video in one of the supported formats.

SanDisk has also launched an online store for video content at http://www.fanfare.com/. FanFare is optimized to work directly with the TakeTV unit, allowing you to download content directly to the TakeTV when it’s plugged into your computer. The site is just getting started and is considered “beta” right now. Ultimately, SanDisk will have a large catalog of TV shows that can be purchased on a per-episode basis. While the site is in beta, however, TakeTV users can download several episodes free of charge. SanDisk is positioning FanFare to be an alternative to the established stores like iTunes and Amazon Unbox.

Regardless of whether the video content comes from an online store or another source, you can watch it on your TV if you can get it in MPEG-4, DivX, or XviD. It should be noted that there are some major file formats that are not supported by TakeTV. Window’s .wmv format is not supported and will have to be converted to work with TakeTV. There’s also no support for pure audio files (MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, etc.) or for picture files (JPG, TIF, BMP, GIF, etc.) at this time. It really wouldn’t be much of a stretch for a device like TakeTV to support audio and picture formats in addition to video, so don’t be surprised if SanDisk chooses to add this capability in the future.

Additional Details

Here are a few additional details about the TakeTV that may be of interest.

• Works with DivX DRM (Digital Rights Management).
• Will display video resolutions up to 720x576 at a bitrate up to 7Mbps.
• Video can be 4:3 (standard) or 16:9 (widescreen) aspect ratio.
• It works with both NTSC (USA) and PAL (Europe) TV color systems.
• Works with both USB 2.0 and 1.1.
• Box contains: TakeTV main unit, remote control (with battery), TV cradle with integrated audio/video cables, and AC power adapter for the cradle.

All told, the TakeTV is a simple device that really can’t be considered an earth-shattering innovation. It’s certainly more evolutionary than revolutionary. That said, it provides a simple solution to a real problem consumers face. The TakeTV device is straightforward, affordable, and doesn’t require messing with finicky network setups. Best of all, once you’ve loaded videos onto the TakeTV, you can slip it in a pocket and easily watch your television on any TV you choose. Simple.