MacMerc.com: Review >> Elgato turbo.264

MacMerc.com: Review >> Elgato turbo.264

"Elgato makes some of the coolest consumer video hardware for the Mac (or anything). So we were pleased to hear that they are out to speed the arduous process of conversion to the latest-greatest in codecs: H.264. Elgato's EyeTV hardware has packed countless hours of programming to high-quality files for EyeTV. With the turbo.264 dongle, get ready to compress video for your iPod and Apple TV twice as fast as your processor."


USB dongle accelerates H.264 encoding - iSquint took 11 minutes, turbo.264 took 7. I'd be curious to see how good the footage looked, and compare that to Apple's AppleTV preset to get a better apples to apples comparison.

The test machine was a 500 MHz G4 - and that's ooollllllllllld hardware, so saying this device converts faster than software is like saying a scooter is faster than grampa with a bad hip.

They are available from the HD For Indies Amazon Store - Elgato Turbo.264 - Video H.264 (MP4) Encoder Hardware for $89.

My over the top home theater setup, converting HD content for AppleTV

OK, the home theater itself is not all that great, but baby, I got INFRASTRUCTURE.

Aside from the G5 with a 2TB RAID that has 200 GB of MP3s, AACs, pictures, TV shows and movies, I've got three uncompressed HD editing stations in the next room all routed and connected to/from the home theater stuff in the next room.

And a couple of thousand feet of cable tying it all together. The linked article above is on my HD for Indies blog, which is (in part) about making independent films with your own gear in your home, so I was showing what all can be involved in getting that all up and working correctly.

Just for kicks, I fed some HD-DVD content over the analog outputs into the studio and captured it, stripped out the 3:2 pulldown, and used Compressor to write it out as AppleTV spec 720p24 H.264. Took a LOOOOONG time and doesn't look anywhere near as good as the HD-DVD source (spaceship battle sequence from Serenity). Technically, that is a violation of the DMCA, even though for private purposes (media shifting).

More interesting would be if I could record HD cable content and convert it for AppleTV playback - HDNet has been running Blade Runner in high def, and it isn't available any other way. While I could make an HD-DVD of it (DVD Studio Pro can burn HD-DVD content on dual layer DVD-R media) which would look better than the AppleTV approach (twice the bitrate for same size & codec), it wouldn't be AppleTV navigable/surfable/easy.

It is inefficient as hell though - takes lots of CPU horsepower, gear, disk space, processing time, etc. Certainly more than is an efficient use of time.

-mike

Macworld: Secrets: Upgrading Apple TV's hard drive, Page 1

Macworld: Secrets: Upgrading Apple TV's hard drive, Page 1

MacWorld's step by step for upgrading the hard drive in an AppleTV.

Nicer documentation than some other online efforts.

-mike

Why $300 more for a Mini not an AppleTV could be worth it

NextLust

This guy does a DIY home theater setup with more features & options than AppleTV. He then goes on to spend more money on more hardware and software to do extra stuff. Not as plug'n play simple as AppleTV, but if you're reading this, that probably isn't a problem.

This has a nice outline of additional hardware and software needed to get all this working.

-mike

AppleTV OS booting on a PC

YouTube - AppleTV OS on a PC 2

Video showing what looks like AppleTV OS booting on a PC. All I have to go on is the video, have no confirmation as yet.

Thanks to Greg Boston for sending this tip in!

If you see I haven't posted something good, feel free to email me with tips etc. at the address at the top of the screen (in the site description).

So I'm still waiting to see full OS X running on an AppleTV with mouse/keyboard. Then Linux of course.

What options HAVEN'T been done yet?

:D

Nurding out is fun.

-mike