Video quality varies according to how the files are encoded, but it was generally good (S-video will look notably sharper than composite, of course). The TakeTV is available in 4GB and 8GB flavors for $100 and $150, respectively. And if you don't have a source for videos, SanDisk's got you covered on that end, too: Its new Fanfare service is an online store that offers similarly easy one-click purchase and downloads of current TV shows. Basically just a USB flash drive with a video-out docking station, the TakeTV makes watching downloadable (or home-ripped) videos a plug-and-play affair-literally. Neither of those problems apply to the SanDisk Sansa TakeTV (which was originally called the "USB TV" when it debuted at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show). More often than not, however, they're either somewhat pricey (at least $300 or so) and usually involve some convoluted setup routine in order to get them working on your home network.
Once a niche category, there are more products now available that can stream downloadable digital video files from a PC to a TV than ever before-everything from Apple TV to Netgear Digital Entertainer HD to the Xbox 360, just to name a few.
Editors' Note: As of spring 2008, the Fanfare video service has been shuttered, and the TakeTV hardware will no longer be sold.