With Streaming Networks’ new iRecord, your computer is now obsolete. At least as a way to get audio or video from the media you own onto your iPod, PSP or other MPEG-4-playing device, anyway. It’s a small video capture/encoding device with analog TV and Audio inputs and a USB output.
The iRecord captures and encodes using H.264/ACC for video, MP3 for audio, and is about twice the size of an iPod. The cool part is that it has no internal storage of its own; with your playback device plugged in, it records directly to the device’s hard drive (or Flash memory or whatever), so you can play it back immediately.
That, friends, is pretty cool. It will also record to any USB mass-storage device you gleefully connect to its USB port, so you could even use it as a poor-man’s DVR, though with the $200 price tag, the poor man isn’t getting one anytime soon.