SanDisk Introduces USBTV: New Platform for Moving & Viewing Videos From PCs to TVs

SanDisk introduced USBTV, a new, industry-wide initiative that is expected to enable consumers to easily move digital content from their PCs to their televisions for viewing in full, big-screen comfort. The announcement was made during a press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where the platform technology was demonstrated and several industry leaders announced their support for USBTV.

“We believe that USBTV represents an exciting new category of flash-based products that will bring digital downloading of video to a broad spectrum of new consumers who prefer viewing on their TV sets rather than on a PC screen,” said Eli Harari, SanDisk CEO. “USBTV has the potential to become an industry-transforming category as significant as the introduction of the DVD and VHS players, because in the convergence of the Web and home entertainment, USBTV solves in a simple, elegant way the ‘last 10 feet’ of the content portability problem in the home between the PC and the TV,” he said.

USBTV is an emerging standard for simple and secure transmission of digital content between
computers and displays such as TVs, USBTV solves the challenge of conveniently moving
video from the PC to the TV. The heart of the solution is a USBTV player, a compact consumer
electronics device comprising:

• Flash storage.
• AV controller that decodes the video.
• Software that manages the user interaction.
• Connector between the USBTV player and the TV.
• Remote control
  

To move video content from the PC to the TV, the consumer follows simple steps:

1. Downloads a video file onto the PC.
2. Plugs the USBTV player into a standard USB port on the PC, just as they would with any generic USB flash drive. The USBTV player requires no driver or specialized software installation and is compatible with all common operating systems.
3. Drags and drops the downloaded file onto the USBTV player.
4. Plugs the USBTV player into any of the supported inputs on the TV— their own TV or a friend’s.
5. Plays the video. The USBTV player automatically decodes the files and plays the video.
   

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