Firecoder Blu, Thomson's SpursEngine graphics card, available in December

"Bag of hurt" or no, it doesn't look like Blu-ray is going to disappear any time soon. Firecoder Blu is Thomson's new graphics card aimed at the HD set, and the second one based on Toshiba's SpursEngine chip. Using same technology as the PS3, the chip is capable of hardware accelerated decoding of the MPEG2 and MPEG4 AVC/H.264 codecs, which lends the card some serious processing capabilities -- the company claims it will transcode AVCHD files to and from MPEG2 up to five times faster than real time. On sale in Japan for ¥52,290 (US$539), those of us in the States should see the card sometime in December for $599.

[Via PC World]

[Kandalom @ Nov 27th 2008 6:45AM]

599 for a decoder card to watch Bluray on computers. You get to be kidding me

[Magallanes @ Nov 27th 2008 7:04AM]

This news did miss the point that this device is mainly a encoder, so this card not just worth but its cheap.

[Dave Chappelle @ Nov 27th 2008 7:26AM]

hay dude if US$599 is too much for you, perhaps we could always pay it in Canadian Dollars?

[Shinigami @ Nov 27th 2008 7:36AM]

Its not a decoding card. Even build-in video can do Blu-Ray decoding (but a $100 video card does the job much better).
Its a transcoding card. It can encode! Not that my video card or even CPU can't do that...

[loosely_coupled @ Nov 27th 2008 6:47PM]

This is an encoder card, well technically it is just a parallel processor, but it will probably be marketed as an encoder card.

But, this "Spurs Engine" nonsense is just a cut-down version of the Cell, and is actually about 1/2 as powerful as the Cell in the PS3 -- and the PS3 Cell is old and outdated anyways.

The new enhanced version of the Cell is called the PowerXCell 8i, and it vastly improves the memory support and double precision floating point power...

[PyRo1509 @ Nov 27th 2008 6:48AM]

Just wait till Prada makes a version of it...

[Shinigami @ Nov 27th 2008 7:32AM]

How is this better than Nvidia GTX 280?

[broli @ Nov 27th 2008 7:39AM]

It's not. The Cuda platform can easily outperform this. Currently ET has the best/only solution...

http://www.elementaltechnologies.com/

[Félix @ Nov 27th 2008 8:13AM]

I suppose it uses less power than a GTX 280 ...
But you'll have to encode ALOT of blu ray to make it worth it !!
so, Defenitely useless for a personnal use.

[KarlW @ Nov 27th 2008 9:27AM]

I wouldn't buy anything like this unless it supported some kind of general processing framework such as OpenCL.

Also, I find it strange that the number of SPUs is not mention in the specifications. That's kind of important.

[plushog @ Nov 27th 2008 10:43AM]

http://www.engadget.com/tag/winfast+pxvc1100/

Looks like the same card but leadtek is half the price. We will have to wait and see how the performance plays out with these cards vs cuda. The leadtek claims to be able to encode Four 1920 x 1080p streams at once.

[futurepastnow @ Nov 27th 2008 11:31AM]

I see it implements the new "no video out" graphics card DRM.

[Ashwin @ Nov 27th 2008 11:43AM]

@broli
Get some clue, the elemental technologies product is just snake oil. The main bottleneck in H.264 encoding is CABAC and that cannot be parallelized. I don't want to spoil your GPU wet dreams but wake up!
Encoding 4 or 5 1080p videos simultaneously in RT is no small feat (for $600) especially when you consider this product is meant to cater to professional markets - quality is more important than speed here.
Try encoding a 1080p video at the highest quality settings using X264 you will not get more than 5fps on any hardware. Any moron can encode a 1080p with crappy quality at a gazillion fps.

[SHSPVR @ Nov 27th 2008 2:09PM]

Look people this is Transcoding card it Hardware decoder and encoder
-MPEG-2 to MPEG-2, H.264 to H.264
-MPEG-2 to H.264, H.264 to MPEG-2

Let see
Nvidia Cuda
Most own Nvidia graphics processing unit
Output resolutions limited to - 1280x720
Output video formats supported – H.264 (MP4) Baseline Profile I think but sure where Level at which can any where from 1.0 to 3.1.
AMD/ATI Stream Technology is useless you must have ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics card gee talk about a big blow to us 3800 user and not much info on it so I geust it about same as Nvidia Cuda spec.

The Cuda platform can not outperform SpursEngine
A Core i7 can probably do in about 3.0x realtime where this card is still 10x faster.

SpursEngine
Any graphics processing unit will do
Output resolutions - 1920x1080
Output video formats supported – MPEG-2/H.264 High Profile, Level 4.1
Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100 $N/A but word was a rorund $300
Thomson Grass Valley/Canopus FireCoder Blu cost $600
Thomson Grass Valley/Canopus FireCoder Intra cost $8000 has lots extxa Hardware most likely for Realtime Visual Effect Transitions & 2D/3D Filters and so on.

Baseline Profile (CBP): Primarily for lowest-cost applications this profile is used widely in videoconferencing and mobile applications. No FMO, ASO or RS.= crappy quality.
High Profile (HiP): The primary profile for broadcast and disc storage applications, particularly for high-definition television applications (this is the profile adopted into HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, for example).= high quality
Then the FireCoder Intra which step it up to High Intra Profile. = better high quality