Great consumer device, don't expect miracles, April 11, 2009

This is a great device for accelerating h.264 encoding on the Mac.I'm giving it 4-stars instead of 5-stars for one reason only: the quality of the encoded quality is not nearly as good as that provided by Quicktime Pro when transcoding 1080p video. The upside: it's fast. Perhaps this is something Elgato can address in a future software update as the issues involve artifacting during high motion segments and slight softness in general. Perhaps not enough to bother most consumers, but it is readily apparent to anybody that compares the results.But, when converting standard definition video (such as DVD video_ts) to AppleTV or iPhone/iPod it really impresses with fast and high quality transcodes.In summary this unit will please consumers wanting to transcode SD video and most HD. Pros or picky consumers will still want to use software methods to transcode 1080p video at the very highest quality.

I've been using Elgato's digital-analog TV tuner for a year and was happy with it. So I'm surprised how poor the quality of this product. I think they missed an opportunity to really understand their user base and what we might use this device for. I use it to convert video from one format to another - mostly avi to m4v so that I can play and archive my videos - TV Shows, Music Videos and Films - within iTunes. For this purpose, the Turbo 264 HD not only doesn't shine, but almost destroys good video.I submitted two photos of my results as customer pictures - they show two conversions for comparison. On top is a QT conversion at a lower bitrate. On the bottom is Elgato's default AppleTV setting. The results for the Turbo device are surprisingly poor. Much darker and with a serious loss of detail. Also, it doesn't allow you to customize the settings "like a pro" (their words from advertising) - no 2-pass (an obvious requirement), no adding a poster frame, no control over...

El Gato just released new software/firmware for this product. My previous review gave it only one star because of HD video quality. I've revised here to 4 stars. The new transcoder is greatly improved. I use the product with EyeTV software to transcode 1080i to 720p. The output video is now much cleaner. Great for my purposes. Would give an extra star if Elgato gave me more info about customizing/limitations of the Turbo H264 coder settings in EyeTV.