For those of you out their slaving away at the slow process of converting your video files to H.264 for playback on your PSP, iPod or other compatible device, this may very well interest you. Ian Chiu over at EverythingUSB has just reviewed the ADS Instant Video To Go H.264 Encoder, a thumbdrive-sized USB hardware encoder for the rather intense H.264 format. The included software, ArcSoft Media Converter, accepts a wide variety of source formats like DivX, WMV and even VOB files, and also supports batch encoding which is great for doing some overnight conversions.

Unfortunately the hardware acceleration is limited to only H.264, so it won’t help you encode DivX or MPEG-2 files, but software however does support conversion to other formats.

In all they were very impressed with the USB Encoder’s performance, and the amazing boost that it gave to slower PCs. Available for as low as $65 on Amazon, this looks to be a great way to speed up those encoding times!

[via SlashGear]