Falling victim to ever increasing competition in the tech world, SanDisk has announced that it is closing it’s Fanfare video download service and ceasing production on it’s TakeTV device, which we reported on last year. That didn’t take long.

In a very business-like and curt fashion, SanDisk informed users through the Fanfare Website that “Fanfare beta has come to a conclusion, and the Fanfare application will be disabled as of 5/15/08.”

That means it took only eight months from announcement to it’s demise, which follows on the heal of similar video download services like Akimbo and Moviebeam.

The difference, however, is that San Disk is not hanging their users out to dry. Even though the Fanfare download service has been discontinued, those who have already invested in the TakeTV hardware can still enjoy it thanks to the TakeTV drag and drop feature which allows users to fill their gadget with non-fanfare digital videos from the internet, TV, etc. TakeTV has the ability to watch DivX and it’s open source variant xVid, and MPEG4 videos.

This ability has made TakeTV more attractive to the BitTorrent crowd and less appealing to those seeking a more structured, iTunes style downloading experience.

Hat Tip – Crave