Inkel's portable AirwayHD tuner compresses files on its own

Granted, portable OTA tuners are a dime a dozen these days, but an interesting twist has been introduced by Korea's Inkel. The AirwayHD manages to boast a diminutive size while internalizing the process of converting OTA streams into manageable files using the H.264 codec. Reportedly, the device can compress files to one-fourth of their original size without any PC software intervention, and it should make life pretty easy for those hoping to view recorded content on their portable media player. No word on a release date just yet, but it'll only run you about ₩100,000 ($106) when it eventually lands. Check out a few more pics after the break.

[KiEn @ Aug 17th 2007 6:06PM]

Compress in realtime to H.264? I highly doubt it but one can hope.

[randy @ Aug 17th 2007 6:45PM]

I'm trying to figure this out too. I have to assume it must, otherwise it's just a miniaturized HD DVR. And who needs a miniaturized DVR? The thing just sits on your shelf or TV.

On the other hand, if it is what I think it is -- a device that encodes and re-transmits OTA HD into H.264 in real-time -- that would actually be quite useful. It would enable folks to finally stream 1080i HD over their LANs.

It is conceivable that the designers of this product have simply used an FPGA or something to carry out the real-time encoding.

[coolapic @ Aug 17th 2007 6:16PM]

There is another "thing" doing the job for Mac since several months, it's called the "ElGato turbo .264"

I use one and can say it's a great product with witch my Mac Mini G4 encodes in h264 in half the time my MacPro would need and almost without using any CPU... Fantastic !

www.elgato.com

[Audiophile @ Aug 17th 2007 8:55PM]

The Inkel is also known as "Sherwood" (one of the highly-regarded hifi brands along with Denon and Onkyo) in N. America and Europe. It must be very good quality..

[Darwin @ Aug 18th 2007 8:26AM]

What? The last time I saw a Sherwood product, it looked pretty cheap and nowhere near my Onkyo stuff.

[Audiophile @ Aug 18th 2007 5:27PM]

@Darwin, do not confuse "genuine" Sherwood hifi products with "cheap disposal/tainted Chinese/Taiwanese-made knockoffs" being flooded on the market. ;)

[Audiophile @ Aug 18th 2007 5:42PM]

Here are some awards won by Sherwood:

2002 - Innovations Design Awards from the CES for the Sherwood Newcastle R-963.

2001 - Son Video Magazine named the Sherwood Newcastle V-756 to their REFERENCE class component list; Stereophile's Guide to Home Theater again placed three Sherwood Newcastle components on their list of recommended components.

2000 - Innovations Design Awards from the CES for the Sherwood Newcastle R-956 and for the Newcastle V-756 Decoder.

And the list goes on and on...