We've already seen the SpursEngine teased in laptops, but Toshiba is becoming vocal about bringing the SpursEngine—the same technology found in the PlayStation 3 Cell processor—to standalone video cards in 4-core configuration. The first will come from Leadtek later this month for $US286, a 128MB card that can fit into a small form PC, and it will be followed in November by Thomson cards that will start in the high $US300s. SpursEngine cards have built-in MPEG2 and H.264 codecs which equal smooth video playback and the ability to uprez SD content on the fly. And at least Leadtek's offering sounds like a solid alternative to small media PC packed with integrated graphics. [PCWorld]

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