Raising this from the dead but I just came across it as I was looking for info on old Wired products.

This is the Digital Media Press. I believe it could convert DV into MPEG2 in real time. Probably used after editing in DV and then converting to MPEG2 to reduce file size for distribution. I think it was single pass conversion so not that great but probably much faster than the Macs of the era. I think I’ve got one but have never use it.

Wired also made the Media Press which came in several versions. The top version would accept standard definition analog and SDI video and audio and either encode it to MPEG2 in realtime or capture uncompressed and transcode the file after capture. I think it could do multipass encoding and had more features that the basic Digital Media Press. Probably beaten hands down by something like Handbrake today but impressive when it was released.

It’s seems like the MediaPress was either licensed to Wired from another manufacturer or licensed to others by Wired. I’ve seen the Ensemble Designs MPEG2 decoder sold by Wired and packaged with an encoder card. It appeared to be marketed for the PC. There doesn’t seem to be much left online about Sonic Solutions but they were big in DVD authoring with hardware and their application Scenerist. Their lowest end encoder, the SD-500, looks identical to Wired’s product. I just saw an SD-500 listed on eBay in a box that looked very much like one from Sonic Solutions but it was listed as a Mitsubishi product.