A few days ago we published a review of the Linux-based Neuros OSD recorder and player. Now, you can win one of these devices! All you have to do is research on the product to find out its current capabilities, and then comment below with suggestions on how to make it better and with ideas for new applications and hacks. The Neuros Technology guys will pick the best idea in 3 days time and we will provide them with the winner’s email address so they can send him/her a free Neuros OSD device (that info won’t be used for other purposes). If you wish to comment but not to participate in the competition, please clearly state so on your comments. Update: The winner is FunkyELF for this post. Congrats!
Competition: Win a Linux-based Neuros OSD
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
In the review I did not see anything about an Ethernet port. I think that is a must. Sure it has USB. But who wants to transport a thumb drive from their computer to their Neuros OSD?
There is an ethernet port and it is already mentioned in the review. It is in fact easily visible in the review image too.
Looks like it needs a hard drive and high definition capability, since it has recording features. Wireless support would be pretty cool, too.
Edited 2007-11-06 01:33
It’s really to bad that there is no commercial support for the MKV container format. Most of H264 encoded videos tend to be in MKV, very few people actually use MP4/MOV, especially.
I can’t wait for the day when there will be commercial DVR/PMP solution that can play anything you throw at it (or at least has an pen API for which people can write codecs).
Most of H264 encoded videos tend to be in MKV, very few people actually use MP4/MOV, especially.
Do you mean most pirated H.264 videos?
1.) Hard drive is a must, user expandable, not locked in.
2.) MKV support, a lot of things going this way. (Tvix from DviCO can handle that now.)
3.) High Def recording and playback, HDMI out.
4.) The ability to play ISO’s. Very handy to turn DVD into an ISO and have it mount, have all the features, menus, bonus material.
5.) Wireless would be sweet too, few players have that, even as an additional break out box.
6.) Ditch the bright Orange buttons on remote, makes it look a tad stupid.
7.) A slimline DVD Player, all these players never include it, some people actually still use DVD’s, be nice to have one that you can actually play the discs. Self copying would be good, but probably be illegal with the copy protection.
There you go, take your pick.
Edited 2007-11-06 01:33
things this fine box still needs are the obvious ones:
– Ogg vorbis/theora support
– HDTV capability
– cable/sat/terristic tuner addons
– recording from firewire/ dv in
– included webbrowser (it has ethernet) for yooou2b
– ooh shit looking at the specs: it has that *g
– oops it has the vorbis, too
– wow there’s a looot of nice stuff crammed in those 230 grams
– EPG missing though..
– (fast!) snapshot functionality
– is this usable by adults/seniors? I’m sure my grandpa would love it
this is almo^H^H^H^H the nice cool open-source version of a VCR anyone would want to have.. niiccce, nicccce.. X)
My missing feature:
Wikipedia integration
One of the things I love about Amarok is the Wikipedia integration. For everything that is being played you are only one click away from Wikipedia, that will tell you everything about the artist, album and song.
It would be wonderfull to have the same capabilities in a video device.
IMDB integration would be the next logical step.
1) Well, I think that Karaoke support will be a plus that can be added on the firmware. mp3+g support will be nice. I guess that you can connect a Mic on the input, not sure about USB Mics.
2)It will be nice if you can view the IPWebCams on your network in your TV thought the ethernet port of this device.
Software feature: Ability to connect a DVD drive for burning your old VCR tapes and other older media to DVD’s.
Hardware Feature: Add a 1394/Firewire port to do the same with your Mini-DV home movies since many of those recorders have 1394 ports.
With those 2 features, my wife would knock down the store clerk (even those at Amazon) to get one.
-Josh
3) And the wildest idea will be to add Bluetooth on a future version of OSD and add support for the Nintendo Wiimote to control it.
I see no mention of tv listings on the site, but this is a must. I also agree on the HD support being needed, along with a builtin tuner (with the built in tuner being the most important).
Seriously, the PVR space is sorely lacking at the moment due to the heavily controlled options that are available.
Support ogg audio. Simple.
It’s a free, open standard with superior quality.
“Win, win, win” as Michael Scott would say.
——–
Edit: Sorry, I noticed that it does support Ogg Vorbis further down the specs page.
My new suggestion is: Update your ‘table of supported formats’.
Edited 2007-11-06 02:24
Listening to some music and think its cool? Hit a thumbs up icon… the box links up with blah-blah-blah network and posts your approval. It then fetches data of other people who felt the same way and returns other things they liked.
Feel like telling everyone just why you think this song rules? Post a comment! Then, when others are getting their list of things you thought were cool, they can see why and see if it matches something they would like.
Maybe not into music? Do the same for tv… for movies… for emulated games.
If there is a free (and legal) way to get these things, give the user a link to grab it.
Not up to writing a network yourself? piggyback off of someone else’s social engine and give it a fresh clean interface!
i think internet radio would be a great feature for the existing unit. there would have to be some way to add your stations.
in the next version i would like to see hdtv support and a dvd burner/player.
Considering that this thing will be attached to a network and wil have some sort of storage, it would be nice if it could stream media to the network.
It should be powerful enough to stream audio using daap or slimserver. Streaming video using rtp would be cool if the hardware is up to it.
The ability to program the recorder over the network would be handy too.
Well, I’ve always been a fan of flac, but I don’t suppose it’s the best format to support with such a device, but I have had a hankering to put a box in front of my tv to catch some of the digital radio stuff I don’t get locally and keep them on my pc for later listening.
Maybe a good web interface, so that you can programme it remotely.
The two main features that are missing on this product (in order of importance)
1. Full D1 Video Recording (640×480 is great but you need to do full D1)
2. Cablecard support – This way you can uttilize a digital cable tuner and decode the video right off cable TV.
There are also 2 ideas that are secondary elements
1. itunes streaming so we have no need for the apple product.. iTV or whatever it is called
2. Free to Air tuner support so we can pick up the free clear channels over sat.
The following would be my wish lists (some may already exist but I didn’t see it on the review):
– DVI output
– NTP
– Customisable interface / GUI
– Choice of a more whiter coloured shell / skin.
– Timeshift? (play back whilst recording, pause / resume playback whilst continued recording)
Video recording from any analog source is good, but you may want to watch videos you download from google video/youtube as well as divx files, but what happens when you have just a remote and a 500GB drive, let’s say you have like 1500 videos, and that you’re an anime fan, you’ll need to properly categorize everything not just by the anime title and chapters, but for genre as well, so in the end you want to have some sort of tag system so users can access the videos they want as fast as they can.
Also try to improve the virtual keyboard, maybe some predictive text algorithms can be useful there.
BTW, since the remote is the primary input device and the OSD has an ethernet port, how come it does not have a web interface? A REST-like API for remote programming would be really nice as well.
Another good feature would be to implement some MAME-like engine so you could play your favorite games, and of course have that USB port to plug in your favorite controller.
What happened with Bonjour/Zeroconf support?
Don’t know if this is already possible, but for playback it would be nice to save the video state so you could watch from the point you left it at any other time.
I think it would be nice to be able to use the OSD with other media remotes such as the Logitech Harmony line in tandem with a very nice home theatre setup. It would be especially nice if you had the OSD networked with a media box in lieu of a full full blown httpc.
1) Implementing DLNA protocol either for server and/or client. For example the Neuros OSD could then be used to record TV show and then they could be played back via the PS3 (in this case the Neuros OSD will act as the server and the PS3 will be the client).
2)Printing functions for the picture viewer. For example you are checking some photos and then like some of them and decide to print them (just plug in the printer into the USB port).
3) Adding different slideshow presentation for showing picture. Let the user have different option on the way he want to present his picture (disolving effect, fade in/fade out, etc…).
4) Special pause function, for example you are watching your favorite TV program and then something urgent come up and you have to stop to watch. Simply press the LIVE pause button which will then start to record while you are away. Once you come back you click PLAY and then continue to where you were before leaving ;-).
This is a few of my idea for now.
I think it would be nice if it could run a ftp daemon, at which you could upload movies to the external harddrive hooked up through the USB interface. At that point you could watch the movie off the hardddrive. Personally I would hate having to move a HD back and forth. So scenario would go as this:
1. Download movie from PC
2. Upload to external HD through FTP
3. Watch movie on external HD
Well just a note to start off with it does have ogg support! Some need to read the specs before posting.
I would suggest not a hard drive, but the simple option to purchase a normal external hard drive with the box. This way if a non-techie is buying, and does not have a hard drive, it is easy for them to get one that they know will work well with it.
A second would be a web interface to stream through, or at least some application from a computer that can set it to stream a file and then go to the other room and start it. A web interface would be accessible from almost any OS and would not require any install process. But some way to easily stream without a hard drive or a 3rd party video streaming software.
AFAIK it does support an external HD–it has a USB port with mass-storage device support.
Ability to browse network shares on the local network in a file manager, and transfer files (such as movies) onto the device wirelessly.
Is there any reason that VLC can not run on this unit? This will give support to MKV and video recording.
I have two ideas. A browser similar to the wii’s could be cool as well, allowing the neuros to do way more (and hey! you could even hook it up to a wiimote and implement the opera Wii JS apis!)
On a similar note, an interface into the Miro content would be really nice. Miro (formerly democracy) has some phenomenal content that would be really amazing if accessible from my couch. Its 100% open source, and it would add a huge amount of content to the Neuros experience, as well as give Miro fans a hardware device for their living room.
Edited 2007-11-06 03:53
The ability to store digital music and play it back through a home theatre system. Visualizations on your TV would be great too.
Oh and this will probably never happen but would be cool: ship it with zsnes and gamepad support so we can play video games on it too. A cool ROM organizer where we could just go in and pick a game and it would launch with zsnes and start playing as if we were using a real super nintendo. The same goes for other emulators of course.
I think support for USB wi-fi adapters would be a good addition. Also support for USB DVB-T, DVB-S adapters.
I would also like to be able to store some “favourite” internet radio/tv stations for easy access, or type in an IP address to connect.
I couldn’t discover whether it did this already or not, but bookmarks (from any source) for favourite music or videos would be handy.
Can it record one thing while playing back a different video? Or do time-shifting (pause live video and resume later)? If not, those are must-haves.
That idea for inbuilt video games is a good one too!
Edited 2007-11-06 04:13
1. How about visual effects while playing music, so I can project the video out onto a wall for parties?
2. Gapless playback, including decent crossfades and BPM-matching is another idea.
3. A serial port or USB-serial adaptor support, so we can control the device remotely.
4. The ability to remotely control the unit via LAN.
Edited 2007-11-06 08:38
1. Wireless support with WPA encryption, but not only so it can connect to your home lan, but also so if you have more than one OSD, say one downstairs connected to a hard drive, and one upstairs without a hard drive, each OSD will automatically see each other and share files, so you can browse the files on the osd with the hard drive from the one without it.
2. Mame emulator so you can play some light video games, along with support for a usb gamepad or two.
3. Built in mythtv front end and back end support, so it can serve as either.
4. Enough built in flash ram, say 8gb, so you can transfer a few important videos onto the device and carry it with you without having to take a usb hard drive or carry removable memory cards.
5. Support for bluetooth keyboards plus a full web browser so you can surf the internet.
6. Ability to connect to a variety of music servers, like daap, gnump3d, or mpd.
Would be nice if the device had a built in wireless card for a wireless connection to the network.
Specs:
Atheros or Broadcom
Open/WEP/WPA/WPA2
Possibility of a third party antenna for long distances
This unit would be good to use at commercial establishments, especially where I work.
Also, perhaps some type of Bluetooth Host or other new technology. I realize using stable technology is good, but we must make leaps. Maybe it would be possible to connect phones to the device so you can upload vids to devices. A normal vid on my 3.5″ player is 70-120M
Edited 2007-11-06 04:34
I like it, but it would be really cool (and probably pretty simple) to integrate a good RSS aggregator and podcast/videocast manager.
iTunes-style music management, or even full DAAP support, would be awesome, too.
Also, support for internet radio would be nice.
The hardware is good; I just think the software could use a few extras.
I’ve long thought being able to edit dvds would be cool.
My thought would be that you could have a smallish file which would describe a number of edits which would be made real time by the device. The device could remove certain scenes (i.e. Jar Jar) or perhaps mix in deleted scenes or perhaps even insert a random scene from some other dvd or youtube.
The idea being that you could swap these “edits” via the internet. Ideally it could be a sort of viral marketing thing.
I don’t know the legal situation with such an item would be, but I wonder whether it might be a legal way to distribute edits as opposed to what must be done now.
1st off, I like the parents idea a lot.
I would love to see video bookmarking so that whatever the media (dvd, video, or audio file) a person could bookmark a spot at in a specific place. Think about it– not only would you be able to recall favorite parts of something, but could search the bookmark metadata to find, mix, and match highlights.
FWIW, MPlayer has such a feature built-in. It allows you to create a text file with a name based on the name of the movie file, in which you can specify time ranges where the sound, the image or both will be omitted/skipped. It’s pretty cool because you can throw this file next to the movie on the CD or DVD and if the kids watch it and don’t know how to bypass it you have instant parent control.
A bittorent client with rss capability and corresponding UI for automatic downloading of tv shows to a network/usb drive. (maybe rtorrent can be used).
Also online weather, news, horoscope informations would be nice (like the similar channels of nintendo wii).
First off, let me say that this seems like a nice product. Currently I have an original Xbox running XBMC (http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/) I also have a PS3.
1. MythTV
I’d like to see some MythTV support built in. I saw UPnP support listed but it didn’t specify client or server. Hopefully its both since MythTV can serve content over UPnP.
But full support would be better so that you can delete recordings after you have watched them or possibly schedule recordings on there.
2. Podcasts
I use a little script called myth2ipod (http://myth2ipod.com/) which lets you convert recorded shows to iPod format directly from MythTV. This script puts together a podcast which iTunes can use directly. You can schedule such conversions per show. This is an important feature for me. For example I have a show that I like on Sunday nights that is on too late for me to see. I have allergy shots that I get on Mondays. All I need to do is leave my iPod plugged into my Windows machine with iTunes up and go to bed.
Once the show is recorded it is transcoded and the feed is updated. Itunes notices it eventually and puts it on my Video iPod. The next morning I bring my iPod with me to the Dr’s office and I have something to watch while I wait.
3. Editing
It would be nice to be able to record an hour of MTV, VH1, CMT or whatever music video channel you like and be able to break up that recording into multiple clips.
MythTV doesn’t have that capability. You can edit recordings in MythTV to cut out everything except one video so to get all of them is an iterative process.
So there is one thing you can go and implement that MythTV can’t do yet
Hope this helps.
Now I have to go see what e-mail address I have on file here!
~Eric
It seem everyone as Youtube browsing , what about getting there competitor as a differentiator from the other products on the market :
Flickr integration/browser :
http://www.flickrbits.com/
Moo integration and there partners :
http://www.moo.com/uploader/partners.php
Metacafe integration/browser :
http://www.metacafe.com/
Tudou integration/browser :
http://www.tudou.com/
Hulu integration/browser :
http://www.hulu.com/
Ebay and Craiglist browsing.
Stumbleupon :
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://web2list.com/logo.php?tag=video
http://www.go2web20.net/
If you want to product to get momentum and let is become more popular under developers you should include the possibility to write add-ons in moderns languages like Java or Mono. This will surely make it more interesting for developers to purchase one and add functionality. All the new functionality will attract more customers.
over-all the whole product looks good in terms of functionality provided. as far as new features are concerned, I’ll concentrate on features with minimum cost but better effects. That forces me to minimise the inclusion of hardware based features
apart from making it compatible to record videos directly to IPOD, here is my main idea.
turn OSD to a video chatting device:
this device is network ready and does conenct to internet. this device is usb ready and can recognize the device connected. why not implement in firmware to identify and work with some generic web cam and include a mic(or maybe plug-in one through RCA).
also, if feasible, a mic/webcam integrated version of product can be marketed seperately. also a proprietry/dedicated web service can be provided for this sake. all depends on company policies and how far they want to go.
really, a product for an end user as easy to operate as OSD is, allowing video chat as cheap as on internet, can make a real big difference in the market.
I just hope that i am able to make sense of my idea.
Edited 2007-11-06 06:33
record audio tapes
I read a few mentions about needing a hdd inside this thing. I’d rather see a capability in it to mount a remote share and/or storage, via smb and/or nfs. I see it has usb, does it support external hdds ? Either way, there would be no limitation in what sized hdd a user could throw at it, and in either cases you wouldn’t need internal hdd, power supply change, heating considerations, etc.
The audio capabilities seem to support a lot of formats already, but the status quo “here’s a list of audio files” just won’t do. How about making a tag-based browser that automatically downloads cover art? (This should be able to be turned off, however, because some people hate tag-based browsing.) That should show AppleTV a thing or two.
I also totally agree with the above posters on internet radio and music visualizations! Web browsing would also be incredible, but might be harder to implement.
Edited 2007-11-06 07:41
What about some kind of Party Mode. I’d like my ripped CD’s to play at my party with normalized volume level and with some kind of playlist, so that I won’t have to bother with it during the party.
Maybe it’s even possible to play music based of favourite level (added through the UI) and genre (from the ID3 tag).
Cheers, Bubbel
Seeing the comments here convinces me that the Neuros OSD is a pretty complete package! None of the things mentioned are all that interesting. I might just buy one. They’re not even that expensive.
Filip
There are many interesting online services that provides Creative commons licensed music either for free, or free full previews with the option of purchasing a higher quality version.
Making this content easily available by streaming and downloads to the users, not only adds a huge amount of compelling content to the OSD, right out of the box, but also helps promote the artists and open music industry in general.
Two sites in particular, Jamendo.com and Magnatune.com, already provides the API’s needed for such an integration and are integrated in several free software programs already, and more sites are opening up their catalogs in similar ways.
( Disclaimer: I wrote the Magnatune integration for Amarok1 and am working on integrating more services into the upcoming Amarok2. I have also recently been hired by Magnatune.com, to work on Amarok2 among other things )
Oh, and as another idea, the shoutcast.com internet radio directory service also provides an API for integrating all their radio stations ( many 1000’s, sorted by genre ) into 3rd party applications. Again, this would add a huge amount of content to the device right out of the box!
( You can never have enough content!
Edited 2007-11-06 08:36
o Playback videos on ftp/nfs/sftp network share
o Support for connecting external dvd player
o IMDB browser (easily look up some info about the media you’re watching)
o Support for browsing pictures on a mobile phone over bluetooth (using a usb bluetooth adapter, for example)
o Last.fm support
o Support for sharing connected hard disks and other storage devices over the network
o Ability to run some external apps (small games, etc)
o Bittorrent client (leave it on instead of your noisy computer)
o Rss support (simple feed reader) and a news ticker
o Video reencoding, if you have a file from an external source, it should be able to convert it to psp/ipod/etc formats, not just with recorded video (didn’t find if it can do that already)
o Video/Music/Image tagging
o Support for reading comic books / manga (open zip/rar files, show two pages at the same time)
o Streaming audio/video recording
o Video screenshot and mailing support (ever found an easter egg on a show and wanted to send it to a friend?)
Edited 2007-11-06 08:36
There’s a tremendous market for a set-top box with a web browser optimized for TV. This opens up the wide variety of media possibilities on the Web. Miro is also very cool. I believe it’s based on Gecko, Bittorrent, and VLC.
Now people are getting networks in their homes, it would be great if these things gained fixed storage and were aware of each other on the network. You could then set up zones (bedroom, living room, etc) much like sonos players, but for video too. A slick web UI would let you control them from any device, including the nokia internet tablets (so no activex), and they could cleverly sync data between them in a similar manner to appleTV does from iTunes.
The media browser needs to be much cleverer when reading remote shares; it needs to index my music share and know about the albums and artists on it, then present either the album listings with album art attached, or solely use the album art to display my music collection. See the UKMP application for the N800/810 for a great cover browsing solution. The Neuros needs the wow factor – maybe even stored thumbnails/DVD art for movies on my network too. With all that metadata available, I’d also expect to be able to browse my music/videos by year, artist, genre, etc too.
The legalities of a built in RSS torrent downloader are questionable, but it would be great if the device could automatically go and download content, then make it available to any other neuros on the network – saving the use of NAS devices etc, where you don’t necessarily want to keep a TV show once you’ve watched it.
Another idea is to approach the BBC and Channel4 in the UK. They are currently offering streaming services to Windows users, and struggling to get decent software out there for linux/mac etc. Having the BBC and C4 TV archive available through an attractive show browser would be a great bonus for the Neuros, making it a true consumer device, and completely taking the software out of the equation.
Finally, I may be the only one who’d want the Neuros out of sight, but two wall mounting lugs on the back, along with a suitable mechanism (extended IR cable, bluetooth remote etc) for remote control, would be a bonus.
I’d like to see more audio support. Specifically Monkey’s Audio and Shorten. I’ve got a good amount of music encoded in Monkey’s Audio (.ape). I also have a few Shorten audio files (.shn) from the Live Music Archive at archive.org.
On that note, I’d like to be able to browse and watch free media, like the stuff at archive.org, or what ever is available with Miro (formerly Democracy Player) wikimedia, and creative commons.
Do the remote control button glow in the dark ? I’d like to see that feature. Also, a button that would page the remote. The remote always ends up in some strange place.
Firewire connectivity. Most cable boxes allow you to connect them to the computer and capture the video.
Alternatively, coaxial cable for analog with cablecard and QAM support. That would be nice. VGA recording and pass-through, too. Not really that concerned with this one.
It’s been said before, but HD playback at 1080p.
Get the community to do the work for you. What better way to get new ideas, than have people hack your product in new ways.
Now in bullet-point style.
Lossless audio formats.
#Monkey’s Audio
#Shorten
#other formats oddball or official formats (which few use) like optimfrog, MPEG-4 ALS, La, Apple lossless and WMA lossless
Online content
#archive.org
#Miro (formerly Democracy Player)
#wikimedia
#creative commons
#google video and video search
remote control
# glow in the dark buttons
# remote pager (am i sitting on it?)
or ability to operate it without a remote at all (web interface?)
more ports or features (is that possible?)
# Firewire connectivity.
# alt. coaxial cable
#cablecard
#QAM support
lastly
#HD 1080p (in the future anyway)
#Community, make cool software mods for us
Take this ( http://www.neurostechnology.com/files/products/osd/osd_large-3.png ) image in the product homepage and do it again with better text color and font.
Also, drop the idea of grayed words.
“Eliminate .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. video at your fingertips” doesn’t seem as attractive as you probably intended.
I’d add gigabit wireless ethernet support, support for recording from a webcam device, and potentially the ability to record from more than one device at a time. Maybe having a main box on one television and then little wireless nodes that can go around the house and can all communicate and transmit video/sound to and from the main box, so no matter what entertainment device you’re dealing with you always have the ability to record and play whatever you want. And definately add basic internal storage space – 2gb of internal flash storage would work fine, but just so you always have something you can record to that you can just swap over to something else later.
You could even use the internal storage to ‘enqueue’ a video for whatever it’s ultimate destination if the required media is unavailable – so, say you were recording for PSP but didn’t have your MemoryStick Pro Duo available just that second (or you’re recording while you’re away and you took your PSP with you, along with your stick). Then it could record happily away on it’s internal space and have it all ready for you when you do subsequently pop in the stick.
Wireless ofcourse.
Edited 2007-11-06 09:38
Most importantly, I would like some kind of display on the device so I can use it to play music without having to turn on the TV.
Other features I would like it to have:
-wireless
-1080p hi-def
-h264 record/play
Funny thing, I’m suggesting features for your next product version so I can win one without those features
Most importantly, I would like some kind of display on the device so I can use it to play music without having to turn on the TV.
Other features I would like it to have:
-wireless
-1080p hi-def
-h264 record/play
Funny thing, I’m suggesting features for your next product version so I can win one without those features
1. wifi and bluetooth
2. Remote Control using your mobile phone (bluetooth).
3. You should be able to remote control it through the internet … for example you want to set the Neuros to record a program but you are away on business. So you should be able to “programm” and schedule the video recording via a browser interface and the internet (by integrating with a service like DynDNS).
4. It would also be nice if you could remote control it via a browser interface on your mobile phone anywhere in the world (for recording)
5. It should have the option to play and stream any of the music files on a home network (also via wifi).
One things that popped in [maybe kinda dismissable, but whatever], although I don’t listen to radios for a long time now, but my uncle does listen to the channels coming from the dig. receiver, and would be a nice feat to be able to record audio from the radio channels with a button, with channel id’s and timestamps and making a collection out’a’them.
I always wanted device that would clearly speak what track, chapter, movie it is playing.
It definitely should be script able, so anyone could make their own audio messages(alarm clock, birthday reminder,beep at every full hour). Plus reading ebooks. Default configuration should include the most useful scripts.
Other feature that I would like to see is fully integrated calendar. Scheduling recordings, adding remainders, alarm clock(+ above feature = being woken up by shorts form Neuromancer).
One more thing [sorry
], so there are plenty of sites where you american people can watch episodes of tv series. Would be kinda cool to support fullscreen playback of any streamable internet video source, like you’d bookmark those you regularly watch, and clickety watch them. Additionally, although not in the US, but it’d be nice to add support for recording these streams locally [ not a big deal really, still, would be nice ].
I’d like to take the “pause, buffer and resume” suggestion a bit further: when watching live TV via the device, let it continuously encode and buffer the current program, as far as storage allows. When you have a “Whoops, what happened there?” moment, you can just rewind by some 10 seconds or so. I’ve gotten used to doing this with recorded media so much, that I often want to rewind on live shows too.
With enough external storage available you could of course save the whole show and be able to rewind as far as you’d like, but I think it could be useful even with a 30 second buffer in internal RAM only.
Depending on the previous use of the replay feature, you can also skip parts of commercial breaks. Especially useful when buffering in RAM only, as you discard pesky commercials to get your full replay buffer again.
Several things come in to my mind, which I have not found to be included in the feature set and hardware specs.
First of all, this device is primarily for TV-recording and video/recordings-playback, but I think lots of people out there would use it a for media extending music to their HIFI system, thus my suggestions are primarily to improve the media-extending capabilities and make remote controlling via. network possible as well.
– Navigation in music (primarily) is sometimes very tiresome through OSD’s on TV-screens and it often bothers me, that I have to turn on the TV to navigate to some music track, when using such devices. Look at how the SqueezeBox and the SlimServer works, make a similar server for controlling the device remotely or port the SlimServer (if thats possible/legal)
– Playback of Internet Radio stations in various formats and protocols is a must! Should expand to function with,e.g., Rhapsody, Pandora, Last.FM etc.
– Better audio components and connectivity, e.g., Burr-Brown high fidelity DAC’s and TOSLINK and/or COAX digital output(s).
– Include a display to allow simple navigation without the TV turned on. Display a navigatable menu-structure, now playing/now showing etc.
– Wireless network could be nice, if the connection would still be sufficiently fast to stream video contents. Otherwise, let video-streaming depend on an ethernet caple, but let audio/pictures etc. be satisfied with wireless transmission. Optimal would be to let the user set-up “transmission rules”. Wireless must support the most common current encryptions (WEP,WPA,WPA2 etc.).
– Include an integrated DVD-drive (a slim slot-in drive). Maybe even include a DVD-recorder, to make it possible to save recordings directly to a DVD media.
– Please include S-Video connections
– Either allow the device to playback ISO’s directly or let a multimedia server running on a PC be able to automatically mount ISO’s, when requested, to easily allow playback of such.
– Does it only support SAMBA for attached network datastores? Should support NFS.
– Throw in emulators (MAME, SNES etc.) and support game controllers through USB
– If HD playback is not supported and no HDMI in- and outputs are possible, then people can always rely on upscaling from a decent AV system/receiver, which actually give quite good results!
All in all, these specs would make this device one of the market leading media extenders/video-playback/tv-recording/hifi-playback media devices, satisfying the needs of ONE device connected to your TV and HiFi-setup able to carry out everything you need.
CONS: All these features would not fit into the current device dimensions…
Hardware (for interfacing with an av receiver):
* SVideo out would be a great plus
* Also digital audio out for the same reasons.
My av receiver works better when video and audio for all devices use the same type of connection, this esp true of video, currently all my devices use svidio and digital audio (optical). And connection from receiver to tv is svideo, enabling video to pass straight through.
I couldn’t see if these features were available in the review or online documentation
Software:
* Be able to select and play audio in the background while exploring the device, program recordings, watch slideshows etc
* be able to create and modify audio playlists, maybe even saving them to different media to the audio files.
* be able to add or remove the current playing song or album to or from a playlist. I can manage this playlist with the above feature.
(I regularly listen to music on a video streamer and this feature would unlock the playlists for me – having to author the playlist in advance on a pc means listening on the pc not the device)
I think a simple cd ripping/audio encoding application would be great. No CD Burner required on the neuros system, but simply take the audio stream input and convert it to mp3/ogg. It would be great if a nice program existed to do this and get the CDDA data from your computer or TV/DVD player since i believe the unit had internet access for some features.
I know an old school way to convert cassette taps was to use a male/male stereo headphone jack and go fro the headphone out of a tape player to a microphone in on a computer and record the audio then encode. it worked great then and should be something similar to do with this system.
So the user above me suggested adding a small LCD to the box. I completely agree with that suggestion. Luckily I was able to hold the device at the last LinuxWorld in San Fransisco and I must say, it’s quite light, so adding a small color LCD like the following: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8490
wouldn’t impact the weight too much. Along with that idea I’d imagine it’d be great to potentially add a battery so you could bring it on the go…
The second idea would be to add a small slot to accomodate a hidden audio/video player, like a wizpy from turbolinux or an ipod like device. You could add video, audio, pictures and other things to that device, and slide it out when you’re on the go and don’t want to bring your neuros with you… Maybe even call it, neuros light? and include a few ports on it so you can share with your friends when you’re on the go, or even import files when you’re at another location so when you get home you can sync up with your setop box. Better yet, it’d be nice to do that over the web from anywhere and be able to download and exchange content with your friends from anywhere in the world. Just imagine, you’re late for a presentation and forgot a media file on your neuros at home, with a few clicks it can be transported to your neuros and you can upload it to the laptop/desktop or device you’ll be presenting on… That’d be “handy-dandy.”
So…
1) An LCD on the Neuros (maybe even a small battery if idea #2 isn’t added.)
2) An internal slot with a “neuros-lite” device to use on the go and as a remote for the neuros, from anywhere in the world over 802.11x.
1. YouTube is good, but the ability to play Full Episode videos from the networks (in case you didn’t record them) would be better. Almost all the networks let you watch videos of previously broadcast shows (at least current season.
2. Same goes for hulu.com
This is a great platform for local content (in your house, on your drives). Add the above, and it is a platform for all/most web content.
There are two things I would really like to see:
1. Digital output.
I don’t own a tv, but a nice widescreen monitor. Even though I can connect ypbpr a digital output (DVI/HDMI) is a must if I want a sharp picture.
2. A simple web browsing/viewing function.
Most of the time you only need scrolling and and a pointer to surf (i.e. direction keys and a ok button) and you can input URLs with the remote control similar as you do on mobile phones.
Of course you can’t write long blog entries this way, but I can very well imagine reading osnews in the living room this way.
The device is quite impressive but it lacks some important features like :
1. An internal hard drive is a must. It should be easy to change without voiding the warranty. Maybe a slot in which u can simply slide the hard drive in so that anyone can do it.
2. Wifi, for connection to the internet and also to facilitate file sharing with any device that is part of the network be it Windows or Linux based. It will be nice also an application for the other computers that can make file transfer easy and accessible no matter your level of computer knowledge.
3. A DVD writer an the software necessary for creating family videos and burning them.
4. Bluetooth. Many people have mobile phones with cameras and would like the possibility to easily backup their media.
5. Full internet browser.
6. Internet radio and actual FM/AM radio.
7. Wireless keyboard combine with a touch pad in a compact design. Or a remote control with a small mobile phone like qwerty keyboard and a tracker ball.
8. Full HD support for recording, editing, playback and burning.
9. Parental control.
10. Audios out for 5.1 6.1 or 7.1 systems.
11. Last but not least this features should be very easy to use no matter the age or level of computer knowledge so must setting should be made in a special menu with not more then one submenu so that confusions are avoided or the consumer getting lost in the settings.
It absolutely must have a CD/DVD drive and it must play movies off them. With support for MKV, various subtitle formats and UTF, but the basic thing would be the DVD drive. Either that, or add more USB ports.
I get what they’re trying to do, make a central box and let the user add most of the peripheral devices. But if I buy something like this and I still have to add external HDD, external DVD drive, and still not be able to do what a regular DVR does… kind of takes the fun out of it. Oh, and it doesn’t have advanced audio either if I’m not mistaken.
Sure, Internet capabilities are nice. But think what the most common uses for such a box would be.
I’m actually in the market for a DVR box to buy to my mother for this Christmas. In a sense it’s going to have to be a “mom-proof” box. I’m going to want a compact box, most likely VCR-size, that will allow her, without any gizmo’s added, to do the following:
* Play movies, music and watch pictures from DVD’s and CD’s. This means a DVD drive first of all. Then it means being able to play DVD format, audio CD’s, MP3/Ogg/FLAC/AAC, AVI/MKV/OGM/WMA, the common video codecs including H.264, common image formats. These are [mostly] covered by Neuros, too bad for the DVD drive.
* She’s going to want to be able to plug in the photo or video camera and just have it work. This means Firewire and memory cards support. As well as transferring stuff to a DVD/CD or HDD!
* Internal HDD of reasonable size (at least 80 GB) is a must. I may sound unreasonable on this one but I’d rather have a 80 GB or even 40 GB HDD built-in than trail an external HDD on USB.
* One touch recording.
So DVD+HDD built-in I’d say would be of much more value. I can even trade in some audio and video codec support for these commodities. So my Xmas shopping will be targeted at a DVR from Panasonic or the likes of it.
Neuros should think better what they’re competing against. There’s regular DVR’s like I described above, for one; that’s gonna satisfy mom. For a geek like myself, I have my computer; I keep it on most of the time anyway, it’s power-efficient and you’re never going to beat a full PC with any set top box. And finally there’s competition like Apple TV, which I think that Neuros OSD in its current format is directly targeting.
1. There should be games on it. Maybe not full 3d, hardware intensive games, but at least things like Tetris or Sudoku.
2. It should come in different colors.
3. A handheld version you can take with you would be nice, kind of like an IPod but for videos only, imagine taking your DVD collection on road trips!
I would suggest following features for this already cute piece of hardware:
1) Remote http or https access to settings.
It would be nice to have possibility to shedule recordings from your PC or from remote location (from work for instance).
2) Transcoding for portables.
Currently device supports recording for various portable devices, but what if owner prefers to make recordings in higher quality for viewing on TV but later transcode them for portable ? Why not let device to handle this ?
Hi,
This device should support subtitles in all languages, not only ANSI ones. I mean for instance Greek or Cyrillic subtitles in a .SRT file.
A file should have a property to be locked in order to prevent children to access it using the Neuros OSD.
Edited 2007-11-06 13:48 UTC
but nice features (if not already included) would be:
– HDTV
– streaming (server) support (like VLC for example – so I can watch media from any netwoked PC)
– playing DVD .iso would be nice (or whatever format mplayer/vlc can handle)
– text to speech would be cool
Handy e-book reader 
– Photo Viewer seems to be quite limited. I would like to see something like gliv (opengl support so zooming and rendering is pretty fast and smooth)
– samba/nfs/whatever server support (to share attached storage)
– international support (I mean subtitles encoding/menus/fonts/etc. – as I am from The Czech Rep. it is somewhat important to me
)
– MAME support
) I love this MythTV plugin that allows me to play games easily.
– Actually some MythTV features would be really cool – commercial skipping for example etc …
– IMDB/Wikipedia support
– Last.fm support
– torrent client would be nice
– support for taking screenshot
– EPG (if not already included)
– dvd writer support (to burn recorded media)
– transcoding recordings to flash video and playing them in browser
– Creating and editing playlists
– management via network (browser/ssh)
– simple way to deploy 3d party applications (kind of apt package management would be nice)
Best regards,
Michal
This is basically a computer running Linux with dedicated purposes. Any hardware geek and Linux geek can team up to make something similar or even better.
In order to protect your business, develop a business model. Team up with content providers so that Neuros is a platform to manage licensed media. I don’t mean that Neuros can only manage DRM. I stress that it also can. On the other hand, some of the function must in the hardware layer so that people must buy Neuros in order to use the features.
Suppose a user purchases a music with limitation on the number of devices to play with. Neuros can handle the rights and protect the content provider while the consumer can enjoy some degree of freedom on the use of the music.
Basically, I think that I would add an E-SATA port as serial ata is the future. Usb is nice but E-SATA would be awesome.
Support for an IP camera(s)
Features include:
– display on live on TV
– display live via web stream
– save to storage device (local or network)
– recall from storage on TV
– recall from storage for remote viewing via web
Useful for home security, sharing/chatting with family & friends.
When there’s already some much suggestions about the software, I’ll suggest more hardware-wise.
* Hi-Definition support – it’s as must at this time. That means support for 720p and 1080p (also, with 1080i as option) via HDMI (also DVI via HDMI to DVI converter) and component cables. h/x264 (in any common encapsulator) support is obligatory for this too. (quality) Upscaling content to this formats will be very welcome too.
* Bluetooth support – should be useful for remote controllers, keyboards, joypads… You know, anything else that can be used to improve to interface beyond the current level and can also open room to a lot of community related projects as games and more web services.
* Build-in wireless g (or higher) – People don’t like gigantic amounts of cables in their electronics, specially the ones that goes in the home theater room. I’m sure advanced users may have preferences for wired connection over wireless, I do, but so many people would like the convenience of wireless connection build-in… even because it won’t add more than 5-10 bucks more to the final price and will also open a lot of option for future interactions with UPnP/DNLA and Zeroconfig devices, web services and modern gadgets.
* Easy discovery of USB optical drives, USB HDDs (more than one USB port would be nice) and Network Attached Disks (supporting common file systems like FAT32, NTFS, extX, etc).
Besides that,
Nothing that a good designed software player with support for user created plugins won’t make it a huge sucess. Create an easy way in install and upgrade all these, like a repository. And you’re good to go. Putting WebKit at its core would make easy to support varios kinds of widgets and subscription services.
I really would be interested in Neuros OSD with these improvements. =]
The first thing I thought about when readin the previous review of this product was: does it support DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television)? It appears it doesn’t (correct me if I’m wrong).
One way to add support for it, though, would be to implement support for one of the many USB DTT decoders, like the Terratec ones. And since we’re at it, just support any video and audio device connectable to the hardware via USB.
Edited 2007-11-06 16:05
A cuter way to control the Neuros OSD, either in the same room, or other rooms of the house, or even outside, maybe even streaming the current audio/video to the Chumby as a mini TV.
Would be useful when working in the shed, find out whats on TV, or even watch along…
Or in the kitchen, selecting the music to listen to when eating, etc
( http://www.chumby.com/ )
Edited 2007-11-06 16:21
Its not a “new” feature but its something that Im looking for for a while to buy. I didn’t found any DivX player that works without problems. Some people buy DVD Recorders/DivX Players to be able to watch DivX/XViD movies on TVs. But is necessary to have a place to store them (external HDD USB cases I think are fine to that purpose) and subtitles that works (with legible fonts). I had an LG Recorder (that I sent back to LG) and now I have one from Pioneer that have problems too. Here in Brazil a lot of people prefer to buy players that have a Mediatek chipset because then is possible to hack and fix the firmware. Some time ago a lot of people buyed a model imported from Proview here, because of that. I didn’t saw any vendor that deserves any mention about fixing these kind of problems. There’s a lot of details on how people want that the subtitles and files be displayed. A person that deserves mention here is a guy called Jefferson Ryan that maintains a blog with overviews and comparisons about different DivX Players in the market like this comparison table: http://ryan.com.br/divx_compara.htm, the text is in portuguese. Theres some forums about the subject too.
If you want that the DivX support works fine and want to know what people that doesn’t speak english expect, I think this is the way to go.
Either provide more USB ports and support for USB HID devices (pick your own wireless keyboard) or Bluetooth with support for keyboard/mouse.
A device powered by Open Source Software is a good candidate to create and promote an Open Source Electronic Program Guide, with possibly (commendably) a web interface, which could have both official and user contributed contents. This device would fully integrate with it.
A TV broadcaster decides to participate and they have full control of their grid which receives the “official” seal. TVs in say, Portugal are slow to adhere, so this system makes it possible to have user contributed information (schedules, program names, etc…).
The information could be organized on a variety of ways. A very useful one, I think, could be “Category -> (N) Sub-Category – Content”, based on your registered channels (you would configure the IR freq. and subscribe to that channel in this EPG). This way you could get an overview of you possible recordings and select them without worrying about things like TV channel and start and end dates and times.
The user contributed content could include reviews, ratings…
The possibilities are endless.
Edited 2007-11-06 17:44
It would be really cool if the device was able to download Bittorrent content via rss (or by webinterface)
Attachments (to refine portability of the device):
– Add a small HD – like in an iPod, but removable/attachable.
– Add battery – like in iPod, but removable/attachable, and OPEN format.
– Add a specialized port for extra attachments (like iPod,) has power, and audio/video plug and can be developed by 3rd party developers. Either use an open-type of adapter, or develop one for future open-source usage.
Audio:
– transmit audio to radio using bluetooth (goes farther and clearer than FM) with special receiver attachment for a receiver. Could utilize the special OPEN port, described above.
– playlists that are easy to assemble/change for music
–
Video:
– it is usually difficult to know what approx. length of video you can get (depending on resolution setting,) so an idea of how long of video that will fit onto the remaining disk size when selecting resolution would be nice. It doesn’t look like this is done here.
– ability to play ISO files.
– ability to play DVDs – perhaps using USB port (probably can do this already?)
–
Connectivity:
– It has a LAN port, so it would be nice to be able to keep it connected to the LAN, assign an IP to it and be able to access it externally as if it was a media server – kind of like a “sling box”, but only better. Uses an encryption technique that is difficult to break, but OPEN source and perhaps hardware selectable.
Pictures:
– ability to generate HTML file of picture directories (on the fly) so you can select, and click, and view the pictures using this interface;
–
I hope there are some good ideas in here !!
== USB Port Possibilities ==
Program the USB port to support a USB hub into which you could plug:
1) A wireless USB keyboard
2) A USB web camera
A keyboard would greatly improve inputting text.
Supporting software for a USB web camera could have the following applications:
* Motion-sensitive video recording with internet viewing (security camera / babysitter cam feature)
* Videoconferencing (Jabber/Jingle/XEP-0180 or maybe just skype) — needs good “15 foot” interface and audio input solution (USB again or mic plugged into existing input)
== Playback / interface enhancements ==
* Time compress playback to watch videos at up to 2.0x — resample audio in real-time to preserve pitch. Possibly not enough CPU in the OSD to handle this.
* Web interface — should use asynchronous calls to update information and navigate screens smoothly
* Simpler / dedicated music playing interface — scans location for folders of supported audio formats, creates index based on metadata, looks for “Folder.jpg” or “Artist – AlbumTitle.jpg” (or just the first picture file in the folder) to support album art — or fetch art from Amazon.com / or however the Banshee music player does it. Once good Album Art solution is implemented, create smooth “CoverFlow” style interface for browsing.
* Predictive text entry option (non-patented) — must learn corrections
Edited 2007-11-06 18:25
Does it have a dedicated hardware encoding/decoding chip or just a general purpose CPU? Because such a dedicated chip is a great adition to PVR appliances everywhere. I believe the Apple TV has one. Such a chip would take care of specialized tasks that are very hard on the CPU (decoding of H.264, encoding while recording) and leave the CPU to do easier tasks, such as taking care of the display/menu/file transfers and so on.
Thereis room for a coaxial cable TV connector on the right.
The Neuros OSD seems like a great simple device. I would put HD video at the top of my list of suggestions for improvements right along with wireless networking. The following is a summary of my thought process for how to improve OSD.
The first thing that came to my mind was games. I’m thinking about some very simple games that don’t require a ton of processor power (pac-man, centipede, asteroids, tetris, solitaire, sudoku, etc.). The games could be played during commercials or just for fun.
Taking that a little further though, I don’t see a good reason why this couldn’t act as a terminal client for a full-powered computer running Linux since it is ideally connected to a network anyway. Once you go there, you have access to 3D games that are native to Linux or compatible with WINE/Cedega, and you also have access to a full range of applications. This would allow the Neuros OSD to be used for showing presentations in a conference room or surfing the internet to look up a website that you see advertised while watching TV.
I didn’t mention Windows because I don’t know of a free software package that the manufacturers could leverage to do the same thing with a consumer version of Windows in the same way that it could be done with X and things like LTSP in Linux. If they could do it with Windows it would increase the marketability of the feature. Perhaps they might develop the feature for use with a Windows Server to appeal to corporate users.
Of course, even without integrating terminal client capabilities there are a few applications that I would place at the top of my request list. A fully capable internet browser and an e-mail client would be terrific for quick access to information without needing to get up and go to a computer. Additionally, I have a grandmother who has completely avoided getting her own computer, but I would love to send her an e-mail occasionally. Integrating more internet capabilities would make the OSD a great device for those who might want it to be their only high tech gadget. Since it is possible to connect external hard drives, peripherals, and flash cards to the OSD, full internet access would make this the ultimate device for many grandparents as well as those who may not love using a computer.
For those who aren’t as intimidated by technology, it would be nice to have a built-in chat client. The Neuros OSD could even be used to stream videos, pictures, or audio across the line in the same way that a webcam is used.
It should be usable with subscription music services as well as internet photo sites from within a native “browser.”
Parental controls should also be included. Even with nothing more than the YouTube browser, it’s not terribly difficult to come upon objectionable material.
From a hardware perspective, the suggestions I have made above beg for the use of a keyboard and mouse. I don’t know if they are supported through the USB interface, but I think they should be. Even the video showing the YouTube browser would have been much smoother using a keyboard. I think it’s great to be able to do things without a keyboard, but support for a USB keyboard should be trivial.
Webcam support might be nice for chatting, but I don’t know if very many people would want to use a webcam in that kind of context. So, I would leave that at the bottom of my wish list.
Wireless seems like a no-brainer. The bandwidth of 802.11g hasn’t been able to compete with ethernet. So, I can understand the decision to use ethernet exclusively to this point, but it would be far easier for most people to put the OSD in their living room/home theater and connect it to their network if it worked wirelessly. Another thing that will help is the upcoming 802.11n standard. Reviews of recent hardware indicate that it can now compete with 100 Mbit wired connections.
A built-in tuner would be terrific. With the move to digital television in the U.S. coming soon, the Neuros OSD would make the ultimate tuner for all of the old analog sets that are around. CableCard compatibility would be nice, but I don’t really know how difficult it would be to achieve (the IR blaster is a decent compromise IMO).
If a tuner is added, PIP should obviously be available as an option.
HD output would also be recommended going forward. I just can’t see a good reason for anyone to buy a TV capable of less than 720p anymore. So, it seems that the OSD should be capable of that as well. HD encoding would be very nice to have as well.
I know that one of the design decisions was to leave out certain functionality (like a web browser) due to the low resolutions of older TV sets. If an HD version were sold at a [slightly] higher price, it would practically be guaranteed to be used with TVs capable of providing a good experience with many of my other software suggestions. It could be marketed as a “Super” model to indicate that it offers more than just an HD upgrade.
Audio should also match the video capabilities. If I were to stream a DVD over the network from a computer, I would want to have the possibility of using 5.1 audio output.
To me, the best feature is its small size. If it had a docking station I could share it among all my televisions. It would be even better with built in storage so I wouldn’t have to network or carry along a USB drive as well.
I’m not getting any clear sense of audio capabilities from this device. It’s clear that it allows for the recording and playback of video – which is great. But it would seem that audio capabilities would be easy to add. Being able to slap in a memory card from our favorite MP3 player and just listen to music would be no bad thing. Being an end-point to a UPnP media server elsewhere on a home LAN – allowing playback of Audio/Video files stored on remote systems etc.
What about capabilities like the “Slingbox”? Being able to stream recorded (or trans-cast a transcoded) a video stream to another location on the Internet or a mobile phone? Crazy I guess – but it’d be pretty cool. Admittedly this is probably only useful to a minority of users – but the Slingbox does seem popular amongst a certain set.
Please reconsider the omission of the s-video out. I realize that the video quality probably suffers by virtue of compression – and so it’s possible that the quality difference is negligible… However since it has an s-video in – it should really have an s-video out. Or possibly consider a AV I/O module – allowing users to purchase an optional I/O module with the connectors they want. Maybe this would be something for a G2 version of the product – so that if people wanted to they could connect via high-end connectors DVI or HDMI for video, and/or optical or digital RCA for audio. The prevalence of these connector types on AV equipment is only growing stronger.
Oh yeah – this is probably pie-in-the-sky – but what about DVR like features. Since the OSD has a network connection it certainly could access guide information. Obviously without a tuner options would be limited, and the typical cable company isn’t interested in allowing you to interface with their cable box… Grr. Anyway, like I said – pie-in-the-sky. A lot of cable boxes seem to have serial ports – but without knowing if it’s active and if it could be used to control the box in some fashion that may be a red-herring. But that’d be very cool.
Really glad that I saw this review and article on OS News. I’ve been thinking about a small home theater PC for a while – but wasn’t really interested in getting bogged down with Windows Media Center – or fiddling about with Linux and MythTV in order to get something that could record video reliably. Looks to me like you’ve built something for those of us who just want something that _works_.
Edited 2007-11-06 20:40
What is your primary goal for this device?
Should it be a perfect recorder? Then my suggestions are:
* integrated DVD burner
* integrated receiver (SAT/Cable/DVB-*)
* integrated EPG
* possibility to record IPTV shows, etc.
* automatically cut commercials
* …still lots of work…
Obviously, your device doesn’t make recording very comfortable, so the current recording functionality is IMHO just a gimmick. The Neuros looks more like a playback device, so improve on that side and move recording into the background, for now.
IMHO, you definitely need an integrated HDD. Now, I guess you’ve chosen external HDDs in order to retain the flexiblity to easily transfer videos and upgrade the device. Well, why don’t you combine this flexibility with an integrated HDD? Put a 2.5” HDD into its own case (with USB and eSATA connectors). Add a “bay” to the Neuros where the case can be put into. By moving the HDD into its bay it automatically gets connected to the Neuros. In order to connect the HDD to the computer you simply need to remove it from its bay and connect it via a USB cable. It would be great to have a mechanism that makes it possible to always have the USB cable connected to the HDD, even when plugged into the Neuros, so you never have to search for the cable.
Make the HDD case easily upgradeable. Optionally, ship with an empty HDD case.
Make the Neuros more portable, so we can use it to carry videos to friends for watching on the TV. E.g., add a bag for carrying the device, the cables, and storage. This could be an optional buy.
Add support for IPTV. Provide a nice list of popular channels to get started, but allow for choosing any channel, manually. Allow users to create their own favorite channel/show list and watch it any time. Allow for choosing by genre or theme. Add an EPG. Create the TiVo for IPTV.
Integrate video stores, so people can buy or rent real movies (not just youtube, etc.).
Also:
* an integrated (HD-)DVD player would be really nice
* WiFi support (often, the router is far away from the TV)
* direct access to any kind of networked storage (computer, NAS, etc.)
I haven’t used the device, so I can’t comment on ease of use. I hope that you cared about the details. For example, if only one device is connected then don’t ask the user which one to use. Make video listing as easy as possible. Don’t add free-form tagging because that will definitely be overkill. If at all, add a few pre-defined categories (Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Comedy, …). It’s disturbing that when recoding a video I have to choose the device type. Either automatically recognize the device (and choose the appropriate format when recording or copying) or allow for transcoding at a later point. Don’t ask for quality settings, by default, but just use the best compromise between quality and size.
Edited 2007-11-06 21:03
Other people suggested a lot of interesting features. The ones that I think fundamental too are:
-DAAP support: this means that you can plug your OSD into your router and automatically a popup o a notify tell you something like “There are X DAAP shares available. Wanna stream?”. it could be nice to add a server function too: you plug a drive/card/whatever with mp3/ogg/wav etc into it and automatically OSD appear ad DAAP share in your LAN.
– RSS aggregator and podcast/videocast manager, with the possibility of transcoding stuff for your favourite device;
– Integration with Jamendo, Magnatune and other service is a very nice idea too.
It could be a nice out-of-the-box feature and it could act as an iTunes Store but free.
– IMDB and IAFD (eh eh eh) integration, so you can retrieve infos about the movies you watch.
– “You should be able to remote control it through the internet … for example you want to set the Neuros to record a program but you are away on business. So you should be able to “programm” and schedule the video recording via a browser interface and the internet (by integrating with a service like DynDNS).” I quote.
– Radio scheduling, time-shifting and recording (via a built-in DAB/radio receiver?)
– Wireless.
– Mame/SNES rom support.
– ISO images support.
– HDMI etc
The original features I’d like to suggest you are:
– Possibility to convert Youtube movies to, for example, PSP video format, so you can watch your favourite video on you handheld when you are out of home.
-Possibility to batch download and convert Youtube video basing on smart criteria, such as Smart Playlists in iTunes. You set things like “Published today”, tag “Linux”, tag “Tutorial”, Max lenght “3 minutes” and go to work, When you come back, OSD downloaded all the stuff automatically and continue to download stuff for all the day or in the period of time u set. Naturally, you have to be able to convert these .flv movies for every handheld with no pain, or you can tell to OSD to do the conversion when it’s idle.
– Keep the usb port, for casual usage, but add a bay with a internal SATA connector, so you can buy easily a 500GB SATA disk and plug it there. This will add the possibility of using OSD as a multimedia enclosure basing on your need (no drive by default), it will give to OSD the capacity to store stuff without plug external drives to it and without ext. hd power adapter floating around for your living room (that is UGLY and Apple knows). You buy the SATA hd, you plug it to your OSD, automatically it recognize the drive and ask you if it can or cannot read it (i doubt OSD read all the filesystem around) and if not, you can easily format the drive from OSD interface in 2 steps. You can do the thing using your computer, but it should be nice to permit a simple plug-format-use process directly from OSD. And btw: USB IS SLOW
– Possibility to fetch covers and lyrics for the playing songs and show them on the screen.
– ADD SOCIAL NETWORKING FUNCTION TO THE NEUROS. Set-up a web site (such as myneuros.com) where every OSD owner can register his/her device and get an account. Every logged owner can discovery FOR FREE all the other logged OSDs through internet, share content, stream content, chat, creating buddies group. See OSDs as little furry animals that together become a big community, a subnetwork. Well, this could have legal problems but you developers could simply say somewhere “We are not responsable of shared content”. Sociality is the way to go to attract a big number of users and transform them into fanboys (= $$$ at every product).
My 2 cents.
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My vision is to have the OSD as your media HUB. Controllable add on devices would make this product stand out. Once you have all your devices connected to it, you could control them through one very easy interface.
Add On Devices.
An optional DVD Playe/Recorder connected through USB to the Device.
An optional VCR connected through USB to the Device.(transfer VHS tapes to HD or DVD directly)(building this may not be practical but a 3rd party vendor might want to pick up the project)
An Optional Video Phone.
An optional Touchscreen to control the device.
An optional hdmi HD upscaller. (there are usb video cards now)
An optional small 6″ Touchscreen to control the device and monitor recording.
*An Optional usb Serial port adapter for controlling the unit from Crestron or similar home automation system.(This devices puppose is to simplify delivery of multimedia content. Control of this device is key.
Imagine hooking up this device to a Home Control system like Crestron. The bigest challenge for any control system is the interface.They all use bidirectional serial comunications yet how many Dvd players or vcrs have serial ports? Very few.)
*This would also be perfect for conference rooms. Imagine walking into a conference room and pluging in your usb key with video on it (or links to videos on the corporate network) and start playing the video by using the touchscreen option and hdmi option.
If I have multiple OSDs in different rooms in my house, I’d like to be able to tune in to what other devices are displaying.
The content could be broadcasted over the LAN. This way I can share my external video inputs around the house.
Another option is to link OSDs together, so I can change the music or video from any room.
Far as I can tell, this product is pretty complete. One thing that stands out though is the big, ugly, many-buttoned, 1990’s remote control. The box is sexy, but you don’t actually need to have it on show or ever look at it much. The remote, OTOH, is the main part of the product with which people will physically interact. And it’s butt ugly. You do not need that many buttons to control this thing. Hell, with a decent UI all you should need is up, down, left, right and fire! I mean, what the hell are those numbers for!? It’s not got a TV tuner in it has it? You don’t even need a volume control, if it’s to be plugged in to a telly. This thing will co-operate with those universal remote controls I’m always seeing advertised, won’t it…?
We live in the age of the iPod people. Ugly-tech is no longer acceptable. Certainly not at that price.
This is easy
It needs to seamlessly interface with OpenMoko. Yea ok, so that means the next version must have WiFi, but in the mean time the LAN plugged in a wireless route works just as well.
So what does OpenMoko for Neuros? Hey, man it’s a two way street! Schedule TV recordings via your cellphone, then watch them on the go. And I’m sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Peace.
1) use the ipod touch as an uber remote control for the OSD… (all it needs is a webserver)
2) dangle a hdd off it, setup a transcoding server to automatically transcode media to stream to an ipod touch…
This device is packed full of features. How about a Neuros Lite for those with less pocket change such as students and the like.
1. Gstreamer
2. WiFi
3. Last.FM scobbing and radio support
Edited 2007-11-07 03:33
I would love to wake up in the morning, flip on the Neuros, and see that there were some new podcasts downloaded overnight. Maybe even a bit of news from a subscribed feed from osnews.com…
I think a built-in A/V transmitter would be great. That way, any TV (for videos) or radio (for music) in the vacinity would be able to tune in to the content without the need for additional expensive/complicated networking devices.
I use a simple transmitter at home and find it very useful…especially when the eyes start to get heavy and I would rather try and watch the remainder of a movie in bed…*yawn*…
I’ve always wanted to control some appliance through a loosely formatted text message sent from my cell phone.
For example you could send the message:
“c36 1700 1730”
to make the device record channel 36 between 17:00 and 17:30. It’s easy, and very accessible (got a basic cellphone and a flash about missing some show, your covered) and it’s quick too.
Implementation could be tricky — i’m thinking a neuro email address you can sign up for and a jabber client running on the device. When a new message is sent, the server forwards the request to the device thru jabber. Or maybe something less complicated.
If doing HDTV compatibility (or VGA) is too expensive, I think it needs to at least be capable of doing component cables, for a better picture quality.
I would like to see it with Gigabit ethernet, a slightly faster processor and more ram and an LCD screen
that way i can use it more like a display device and do the heavy lifting at another machine
This has much that I need for a slingbox equivalent.
To the many fine suggestions, I would add:
support for ESATA II with port multiplier, as supported by the Terabox (see http://www.cfienclosure.com/4043UA.html).
support for PoE (power over ethernet) to lose the power brick.