Customer Reviews

Elgato Turbo.264 - Video H.264 (MP4) Encoder Hardware 10020500

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this to encode movies for my AppleTV. When it works it's great but more often than not it doesn't work and you won't know that until after the movie has finished encoding which can be quite a while depending on the length of your movie. The problem is that the encoded movie will, at a certain point during playback, become totally pixelated and resemble a moving mosaic. This issue is apparently a well known bug as there is a forum devoted to this on El Gato's website. This mosaic effect makes the movie totally unwatchable although the sound plays normally. After a while the mosaic effect disappears and may or may not rear its ugly head by the end of the movie. Why this occurs is beyond me and is totally random. El Gato's tech support had me connect the device directly to my iMac while removing all other connected usb devices but the problem remained. I also reinstalled the Turbo software but again, the problem remained. I've since chucked the unit into the trashcan as life is just too short. My advice to any Mac owner considering this product is to stick with Handbrake or Quicktime 7 with Perian extensions installed to encode your movies. Both Handbrake and Quicktime 7 have export functions specifically for AppleTV or iPods. While your processor will take a hit, you'll get much better results without the added aggravation or expense.

I bought one of these a little over a year ago, intending to use it to convert videos for use on my iPhone. it works great for that purpose, speeding the production of videos substantially, even on my fast iMac.

This Christmas, I got a Sony PS3 and started to try to use the PS3 as a media server. First, I wouldn't recommend depending on the PS3 for this; it's limited in what files types it supports and very finicky about filenames, etc. But the turbo264, unfortunately, encodes in a format that is unreadable by the PS3. So, the turbo works well for what I bought it for -- so it deserves at least 4 stars. But be aware, it's a piece of hardware with preset and unchangeable characteristics about how it encodes. Great for use with Apple products; not so hot with a PS3. It will encode for PSP, but that's a pretty low resolution and looks terrible on a big screen.

Makes the conversion of all sorts of media types to h.264 (mp4/m4v) much faster. Simple software, easy to use.

I had to delete and rewrite my review.

After living with the Elgato Turbo.264 for awhile, and getting a new computer, I'm really totally impressed with this things performance.
I've read that it really shines best on older Macs, but that hasn't been my experience AT ALL...it FLIES on my new Mac mini!
This new mini is faster than my 2005 G5 and I figured the Elgato Turbo.264 was going to go in the other room with the older G5 but I figured for kicks I'd try it out on my mini, well glad I did! A half hour show exports in iPod/iPhone quality in about 15+ minutes! Really impressive. And while it may not be the HD version it looks just great on my 47" monitor!

Very pleased and would buy it again!

I recently bought the Turbo.264 and was VERY disappointed in the results. I was initially impressed with the speed until I saw the output of the movie. Big blocky picture output which made it unviewable. I tried a few times after that, with different sources (all unencrypted DVD's, still getting the same result).

Technical Support at Elgato was not much help as they told me it probably had to do with a bug in the firmware. They sent me a link to a new beta firmware update, but it was the same result.

I am very disappointed in this. As of right now, it is useless to me and it's not even heavy enough for me to use as a paperweight. I'm back to using Handbrake for now.

We bought this little gadget a week ago and thus far we are very impressed. We are encoding video on a PowerMac Dual G5 nearly 10 times faster than using the Quicktime Conversion with Final Cut Pro 6. Very amazing and well worth the money. The only complaint that I have is that it is too wide for me to use with my MacBook Pro while plugged into a power source AND an external firewire drive. But that's it. I highly recommend, unless you love the extra 30 minutes it takes for your project to output.