Leadtek on Monday announced it will demonstrate the first external video encoder equipped with a Toshiba-made SpursEngine media processor, the WinFast HPVC1100, at the 12th Embedded Systems Technology exhibition in Japan on May 15th. The device will let notebook or desktop users to play back or encode high-definition video thanks to a variation of the Cell Broadband Engine used in Sony's PlayStation 3 gaming console, though it has half the processing cores here, at four.

The WinFast HPVC100 contains a WinFast PxVC1100 PCI Express graphics card that has 34mm/54mm connection support and is based on the Cell processor, which itself gets 128MB of XDR memory. It connects to computers via an included 26-pin high-speed cable.

No release dates or pricing information for the Leadtek WinFast HPVC1100 external encoder have been announced. [via Akihabara]