Yesterday in Tokyo, Leadtek demonstrated their new “Image Processing Box”, an external device using Toshiba’s SpurEngine chip to accelerate video encoding the decoding.
Leadtek’s image and video processing box is based on Leadtek’s WinFast PxVC1100 card that sports Toshiba SpursEngine SE1000 chip and is equipped with 128MB of XDR DRAM memory, but connects to a notebook using ExpressCard interface. Since the original card for desktops is designed for PCI Express x1/x4 slots, the external SpursEngine box will hardly starve from the lack of bandwidth. The external stream processing box weighs 700 grams and is 45mm x 194mm x 90mm (width x depth x height).
The device can encode or decode up to four 1080P streams simultaneously in either MPEG-2 or H.264. Given that the SpurEngine chipset is already in Toshiba laptops, and few applications support the devices, it’s almost certainly aimed at software developers.
