Fuji Work is the first company to announce a realtime H.264 encoder. It features a Memory Stick Duo slot, and o­ne of its intended uses is with "portable game devices" such as the PSP.

Fuji Work announced o­n the 20th that they will release the "PvrAlex" media recorder that supports realtime H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoding, in September. It is Open Price, but the company stated that it will cost "about the same or less than DVD / HDD recorders."

This product can take signals obtained from either its integrated terrestrial analog tuner or an external source and encode it into the H.264/MPEG-4 format, then output them to either Memory Stick PRO Duo/Duo or a not-included hard drive. It does not feature an internal DVD drive or hard drive.

The company is acquiring a Memory Stick Video Format (MSVF) license from Sony, and the files that are outputted by this device can be viewed o­n portable game devices supporting MSVF -- such as the PSP. When outputting files, two resolutions can be selected: SDTV (525i) for use with household TVs, and QVGA (320 x 240) for use with the PSP.

Five bitrates can be selected: HQ (3Mbps), SP (2Mbps), LP (1Mbps), EP (768kbps), and CS (Custom). When using the included 256MB Memory Stick PRO Duo, the most amount of video that can be recorded is 61 minutes. As for how the encoding itself is accomplished, the company is using an exclusive LSI to do the hardware encoding, making realtime encoding a reality.

The terrestrial analog tuner contains no EPG (Electronic Program Guide) function, and consists o­nly of a timer -- but when connected with a PC via USB, the device can cooperate with EPG software running o­n the PC (they did not specify which software). Other features include a 3D Y/C filter, ghost reduction, white peak correction, outline correction, anti-block noise filter, and other such video quality features.

Video input/output ports include D1, S-Video, Composite, and for audio input/output, an RCA pin connector. A Copy Guard feature protects inputs from external devices, so DVD-Video discs currently o­n the market or terrestrial digital broadcasts with copy-once signals cannot be written to the Memory Stick. The body size is 280 x 45 x 220 (W x H x T), and it weighs about 1.4kg.

Inspired by:
http://www.itmedia.co.jp/lifestyle/articles/0507/20/news058.html

Fuji Work Technica:
http://www.fujiwork.com/technica/