LaCie drops FastCoder

[Frobozz]

Just a week ago LaCie said its April shipping start date for FastCoder/CaptyDVD 2 had moved from April to May (duh!) and now I read this posting from someone who had placed an advanced order. It is from Lacie:

"Thank you for your order of our FastCoder product. Unfortunately, due to some concerns and engineering issues we have encountered with this product, we have decided not to bring it to market. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We want to consistently bring reliable products to our customers and we do not feel that the FastCoder could meet these standards."

The FastCoder is a Pixela (Japan) product that uses an external box to encode iMove and FCP DV to MPEG 2 in approximately real time, even with G3s and slower G4s. CaptyDVD 2 has motion menus and AC3 encoding. The product was to sell for $250.

So with the recent demise of the ADS USB Instant DVD for Mac, it appears Pixela no longer has any U.S. products.

Addendum:
I just read some more about this. Reportedly Apple made changes in Firewire with Panther that caused problems for the FastCoder. LaCie didn't want to sell something that would only work with Jaguar or earlier and Pixela was unable to solve the problem.

[mhar4]

Huh. That blows. Although I did notice when I checked it out that it was NTSC only, so it wouldn't have been much use to us in the PAL Universe.

Does that only leave Elgato in the Mac hardware MPEG-2 encoding business?

Of course, as the G5s become more ubiquitous and (hopefully) faster, hardware encoders may drift from the scene anyway in the next few years. The same argument applies to x86 processors, too, as they continue to increase their clock speeds.