I just checked out Elgato's web site, and they have it in their on-line store for $99.99. I'm going to order one right now. I'll post back once I've tried it, if no one else chimes in in the meantime.
I ordered mine on Tuesday, and sprung for '3-day select' shipping, cuz it was only about $2 more than standard ground. It was on my doorstep the next day!
What I want to know is if this turbo .264 will provide any benefit to me with a quad xeon mac pro 2.66ghz?
I think, but I'm definitely not sure, that it helps slower computers the most. I've been using it with my 1.42GHz G4 Mini, and I get up to 20 frames/sec now, or about 2/3 real time. Used to take hours and hours to encode a 1 hour show. Looks like it will encode a 24fps '1 hour' DVD TV show (which is really only about 43 mins) in less than an hour.
I haven't tried it yet with my 2GHz C2D Macbook, which already makes speeds comparable to this.
So all of you are using the ElGato app, right? Why can't you use another app with this hardware encoder... like Quicktime H.264 encoder.
I tried it with Handbrake and MPEG Streamclip, and neither one seemed to recognize that it was there -- I didn't notice any speed improvement. Incidentally, neither did EyeTV at first, but once I restarted EyeTV I got much faster export speeds (and the revised 'turbo' progress bar), but only when I specifically selected the exports that list the encoder (see below).
And one more question for you guys. Can you encode at a higher resolution, like full DVD res if you use an app other than ElGatos?
If you use the app that's bundled with the encoder, it does not seem that you can set any of the parameters (res, bitrate, etc). Same thing goes for the 'Apple TV' export pre-set in EyeTV -- you can't change any settings.
It seems that the encoder is 'hard-wired' to encode at a certain quality. EyeTV does have a generic H.264 export that allows you to set all the parameters, but when you use it you get the normal blue progress bar (not the red 'turbo' one) and it doesn't seem to be any faster.
Same thing goes for Quicktime. With the encoder (and its software) installed, QT has new export options, like 'Movie to AppleTV (Elgato Turbo.264)', in addition to the regular 'Movie to AppleTV' option, but with the encoder export selected you can't change any settings -- you have to use the default settings. There is a generic 'Movie to MP4' export option -- you can select H.264 and set the resolution and bitrate, but it doesn't seem to use the encoder once it starts.
As for the video quality, I think it looks ok with TV shows recorded by EyeTV. A little artifact-y, but you get that with the EyeTV recordings anyway. I have yet to try it with ripped DVD content -- I'm in the process of trying that right now.
I don't know. I'm disappointed by how limited the encoder is, but when it works, it really works. I plan to use it mostly to export from EyeTV to iTunes for viewing on AppleTV, and it speeds that process up a lot, so it works for me.
I wish I could comment on what it does with DVDs. People that want it primarily for ripping DVDs probably won't like the lack of settings. Also, I haven't found a good simplified process for even using it with DVDs. You can use Mac The Ripper to extract the content, which is fairly fast but leaves you with a VIDEO_TS folder filled with .VOB files that aren't necessarily broken down into, say, individual episodes. Hopefully Handbrake will release an update that can take advantage of the encoder's ability, but I'm not hopeful -- they probably won't feel there's enough people using the encoder to go to the trouble.
