SanDisk’s USBTV – Whatever happened? Was it vaporware?
1June 18, 2007 by Atila
Flash memory and music player maker SanDisk announced USBTV (See video below) with a fair amount of fanfare at CES in January. But since then, we’ve heard nothing about it.
The PC-TV space has been filling up since then, and USBTV’s relatively cheap (<$200), relatively simple (plug in a thumb drive dongle into your TV via a cradle and RGB plugs) method of playing downloaded media on big-screen TV's seems to have been forgotten in the streaming world we're now in (see under: AppleTV).
We have a few sources, though, and we promise to dig out the story on USBTV. Was is just vaporware? Or is it real? Hello, SanDisk? Anyone there?
Category Analysis | Tags: AppleTV, CES, SanDisk, USBTV, vaporware
Flash based delivery via a remote control interface? OK, this is the right idea for my daughter’s generation. Move content via solid state devices to TV, phone, computer, without any long render times. Actually, we consume many 1 to 2 GB SD cards now in our household, and I often move content (podcasts) from computer to handheld device for remote viewing.
As with any digital video, render times are the make-or-break. On the fly render on any platform (HD TV, computer, iTV, iPhone, iPod,etc) is the killer app. Just give me decent solid-state storage, universal connectivity and render on any platform, and I now have the plug-and-play solution (don’t tell Hollywood).