SpursEngine-based Winfast HPVC1100 video encoder hits Japan this month
By Donald Melanson 
posted Sep 4th 2009 4:31AM
posted Sep 4th 2009 4:31AM
Intrigued by the thought of some SpursEngine-powered video encoding promised by the Leadtek Winfast HPVC1100 external video encoder that first cropped up way back in May? Then it looks like you're now in luck -- if you live in Japan, that is. According to Akihabara News, the device will finally be hitting store shelves in the country sometime this month, and set you back a somewhat hefty ¥40,000, or about $430 -- although we're sure that's more than acceptable for some folks looking to save some time in the field. Still no word on a release 'round here, unfortunately, although that should be a fairly solid bet if the company's WinFast PxVC1100 PCI-E card is any indication.
looks pretty sleet... good night folks.
A crippled Cell chip addon for more than the price of a complete PS/3. Nice.
Its not what its worth, its what people will pay for it...
I suppose part of the value is the PCI-E connection; you can pump uncompressed video into this device faster than you could get it into a PS3. For professionals who need to get their video ready and move on, that could be worth it.
Of course, if you bought a PS3 (one of the non-slim models) and put Linux on it, you could run a better H.264 encoder.
You can already buy the PCI-e version for $229 at newegg.com and $279 with bundled software.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815122014&Tpk=N82E16815122014
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815122013&Tpk=N82E16815122013
Waste of money, the quality of the output from the H.264 encoder that the Spursengine comes with was found to be no better than XviD on the Doom9 forums by someone who managed to acquire one of these.
It's not the hardware that's at fault its just a rubbish H.264 encoder that is inferior to x264 in every way.
At the quality level it outputs if matched by x264 your encodes would be even faster on a regular CPU.
That PCI-E logo—is this actually an external PCI-E device? Cool. I'd heard, back in 2006, that external PCI-E cables were in the spec, but I think this is the first time I've seen a device to use them.
I want to move to Japan. I would feel so rich with millions of yen!