Digital Home Thoughts: Encoding in the Fast Lane: The El Gato Turbo.264 Reviewed

Two Caveats
Depending on your point of view, the fact that this is an Apple-only device is a minus. I, for one, don't care because I only use Apple computers for my media production needs, but others might disagree with me. For Windows users, ADS makes a piece of hardware that looks similar to the Turbo.264 and makes similar claims. I imagine it's probably quite similar, but again I haven't tried it so I can't say if it works as well, but if you've used it, I'd love to know if it does.

Secondly, there have been reports about the difference in performance between a slow machine and a fast machine. On my home iMac, a 1.83 Core Duo with 2 Gigs of RAM, the difference is quite pronounced. I've heard reports that the difference is even more pronounced on older G4 and G5 chips, and less pronounced on high-end Mac Pros, so your mileage may vary.

Conclusions
It's hard not to be skeptical when some tech company comes forward with a new "change the world" device. Logic would dictate that you couldn't speed up a really fast dual core CPUs processing video over a slow (comparatively) connection to a USB dongle, but the Turbo.264 does exactly that.

If you find yourself downloading a lot of video on a regular basis, or ripping your DVDs for your AppleTV, iPhone or iPod, then the Turbo.264 might be the answer to your prayers. The amount of time saved is easily worth the price tag in my opinion.

Vincent M. Ferrari is a blogger, podcaster, photographer wannabe, digital media junkie, and Apple fanboy from the Bronx, New York. His most famous accomplishment is canceling his AOL account which got him an inordinate amount of fame, something he still brags about to all his friends. When he's not taking down multi-billion dollar corporations, he's writing on his own blog, taking photos, and working as a Producer for the Apple Phone Show podcast.