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]
