Raiden's Realm: Review: Sandisk Sansa Take-TV

Review: Sandisk Sansa Take-TV (Page 1 of 1)

Written by Steve Lake
Posted on: Dec 17, 2007 at 09:41am
Section: Hardware
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Today we'll be looking at a rather interesting new multimedia product produced by Sandisk, makers of some of the best flash based storage and multimedia products around. What is this amazing product? It's the Sansa Take-TV device, a portable media player that allows you to easily take your movies with you wherever you go with little hassle or fuss.

As simplicity is the key to the Take-TV device, it comes with just four basic elements; The Take-TV pendrive, the remote (which combines with the pen drive), the Take-TV player, and the power connector. The player itself is very simple, allowing you to more or less just plop it down, plug it in and then quietly forget about it.

The remote and pendrive combo, as seen above, go together as one unit for easy transport, and storage. The pendrive unit itself is essentially an armored pen drive, as it is covered entirely in a hard metal casing. While it makes the drive very durable, I don't recommend testing its strength by running over it with the nearest vehicle. But that extra durability does come in handy. On a downside though, it adds some extra weight to the drive, which may risk the USB connector breaking off if you're not careful. So be gentle and cautious while you've got it plugged into the machine. Otherwise, it's a very, very nice pen drive with lots of speed.

Being that it's a generic pen drive, you won't need any special drivers to use it. Just plug it in and start using it. And it really doesn't matter what OS you're using either. You can use MacOS, Linux or Windows to fill your pen drive, as it'll work with any of them without a hitch.

The remote itself is simple, but handy. However, if you tend to have a light touch on remote controls, you may find this one a bit difficult to use as it requires a bit of pressure to activate each of the buttons. Other than that, it works flawlessly. And should the batteries ever where down, it uses a standard button battery for power which can be had at nearly any store.

Getting started with the device is easy. Simply fill the pen drive with movies, plug the unit into your TV, connect the power, add the pen drive into the player cradle and you're off and running. Yes, it's really that simple. In fact, it was so simple that I was quite surprised. I've worked with a handful of multimedia systems of late, and this one is hands down the easiest to use and install. You also have your choice of two different kind of video connectors; Svideo and Composite. So depending on your TV, you can use either quite easily.

When you first power on the unit, you're greeted by a simple splash screen that quickly gives way to a menu of the movies you have on the drive. If you want to be able to play pretty much anything under the sun, you may find yourself in a bit of a fix. The list of supported video formats is rather short. Only the Divx and Xvid codecs are currently supported. The same goes for supported formats. Only videos up to 720x576 at a 7mbps bitrate are supported.

The list of options available to you is also rather short. But that's to be expected of a device designed with portability and ease of use in mind. And we're talking extreme ease of use. The picture quality for the device is excellent, and allows you a fairly wide assortment of resolutions to chose from, including pan scan, fill, original (aka the original format the video came in), and letterbox. Depending on the kind of movie you're watching, each one may present a better viewing experience for you than the other.

Information about the video, including track, length, audio type and subtitles is quickly available to you by clicking the information button. The player also has the ability to not just pause the image, but also step forward through your video one frame at a time, allowing you to see things that you otherwise wouldn't be able to.

The setup menu is also very easy to navigate, and while it only has a few select options, it's easy enough that even grandma could use it. Again, the list of options is short, but again, since it's designed more to be a portable media player (although it can be used for a light weight home entertainment system) the number of included options tends to be thin. One of the biggest advantages it does provide you in your home however is that you can take movies off of your computer and carry them out into the living room to watch comfortably in front of your TV. But you can't record off your TV and take it back to your computer as there's no recording options.

Overall I liked the player a lot. It's quick and easy to setup and even the biggest novice can start using it in a matter of minutes. And lastly, don't forget to check out our brief video review of the device! We've got a few extra surprises to show you in the video.

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