Memory card maker SanDisk is to announce Take.TV, a video portal and related PC-to-TV device on Monday, according to NeeTeeVee.
The portal will allow users to download content including television shows and films onto their personal computers for transfer onto the Take.TV device that can then be manually taken from your PC to TV for viewing.
As the photo above demonstrates, SanDisk has a rather liberal view of the word simplify.
The device is said to be able to play back videos encoded in DivX, Xvid, and MPEG4, and possibly support HD (although how it would do this over analogue plugs is beyond me).
Microsoft has tried for years now to bring PC’s to the loungeroom with its Windows Media Center Edition product (since folded into Vista) but has failed. However there is an increasing market for network aware devices, Apple TV is perhaps a poor example but products from Netgear, Zensonic and others (I own a Zensonic Z500) provide smart DVD players that also stream video and music over a network and from the internet.
With a possible list price of $99 SanDisk may well find a willing audience, but in a networked world it’s more than a little bit bizarre that a product such as this requires manual transportation from A to B.
