Following up on the rumor that Apple was going to add an H.264 hardware encoding/decoding chip into all upcoming Macs, Elgato has released an H.264 USB stick that does just that. What does this mean to you? Well, a USB stick would be second best to an internal chip (like was speculated before) but the effect is the same.
https://gizmodo.com/apple-to-add-h-264-hardware-decoding-to-all-machines-243091
Instead of using your processor to encode and decode video, this Turbo 264 offloads the job so you’re free to do other things. The implications of this are recording a screencast in real time, or doing real-time transcoding of various content that you can stream to your Apple TV. Or, you can just use it (rather boringly) to make videos for your iPod and iPhone fast.
For now, it’s only available in Europe for 99 Euros.
Turbo 264 [Macwelt]
