Stories:442
From The Neuros Technology Wiki
[edit] Usage- "Why do I Want This?"
It's a traveling photo and video album It makes it easy to share home video and photos anywhere. Your whole home video and photo collection fits in your pocket.
Movies and Audio with you everywhere Watch video on your commute or travels and when you arrive plug into virtually any TV set on the road.
[edit] Stories/Testimonials
Drive your friends nuts with home video
I take a lot of home video these days and it was pretty much useless until I got the 442 and the recorder. Now I encode it all directly on the 442 and I have it with me all the time. Instead of showing some paper photos of the family, I can show a little clip of my daughter singing. Want to see some photos or video of our last vacation? I've always got it with me now. The 442 has done for my videos what a digital camera did for my photos, it made them portable and useful.
Joe
[edit] First Impressions / Reviews
My Review of the 442 after day 1:
First Impression: Solidly build, looks good, no cheap components, Screen quality is good. The joystick sucks (hard to push and annoying)
This looks to be a milestone in the Neuros Company. This player is starting to look and feel like the other players it competes with. It is not overly large or made out of cheap plastic, and its specs are very competitive. All connection points seem to be within a tight tolerance, making nice snug connections.
Things I like:
-Recording quality is much better than the mpeg4 recorder. Recording is smoother and being able to see what is being recorded on screen is a great feature. ( "press play to record" is too big)
-Navigation is quick (except for the joystick), load times are great and interface is beautiful and intuitive.
-442 casing has a goldish tint...gives it that edge over those other silver cased products.
-Case that comes with the unit is a huge improvement over the neuros case. It slides on and off easy and fits snug. Actually has padding so it has a purpose. (Neuros case served no purpose (besides making you feel better) and slid around alot.)
-power light blinks when charging instead of having whole screen lit up.
-Simple controls that are intuitive
Things I don't like:
-Joystick -back button is not in good spot -still has some bugs to be worked out, but that was expected. -most other things I dont like could be fixed with firmware. (many are on bugzilla list already)
Things I would like to see:
Hardware: CF card support, maybe a video camera built in (then it would be the ultimate multimedia device.)
Software:
-Much larger support for divx codecs. Is it possible and legal to take divx codecs from free codec packs found online and port them to the neuros (ex: Nimo Codec pack). Try to cover as many as possible, makes life so much easier for the user.
-Bring the music player up to par with the neuros (equilizer, browse while playing)
-The ability to play mpeg-2 files. If i could put VOB files on this thing and play them I would love you guys forever...
-Encode straight to Divx. Does it do this now?
-Calender and To-Do list... Then maybe even make it compatable with Outlook.
review by: Derek Pedersen
Following posted by yitboss96bb on the neuros forums:
(If you do not want this review in here yitboss96bb, I appoligize, and feel free to edit or remove -Derek)
I just got mine today to test. Here are my first thoughts:
The design is sleek and nice. For future editions, I would think of changing the housing from a chrome one, since it gets all smudgy with fingerprints. Not a huge deal, but I am anal about that stuff.
If you have an MPEG 4 recorder, it has the same type of 1/8" to composite cable inputs and outputs. The menu system is nice, although for future editions, a touch screen would be better. COntrols are intuitive as I was copying files without reading the box. If you have used a USB drive or a thumb drive, it is the same thing to get your files. Screen was bigger than I thought... I guess I was thinking the screen would be smaller. Device has a quick bootup time... a complaint I have head of other PMPs. Menus look really nice. Only has an SD card... given that Neuros is marketing the MPEG4 as a companion, the addition of CF is a must for future editions, but since this will record directly, not a necessity at this time.
I will let you know more as I go.
Follow up by yitboss96bb:
Finally got the 442 to work. Copied the files initially, but they weren't showing up in the menu. After I re-formatted the drive, things started showing up.
So I played my first Divx file... Excellent quality. I would say as good as I have seen on any PMP or on a PDA. Looked great and sounded great. The files are pretty easy to go through. Unfortunately, you cannot browse while playing a video, something I hope can be changed with a firmware update. It does offer a very cool Play the whole folder feature, so if like me, you organize all your files by title, season or whatever, you can make your own system and play accordingly. SO far I have been impressed. I have not done the PVR yet, so I am curious to see how well that will work.
I did try audio recording, but not sure how that would work... There does not appear to be a built in mic. Hopefully, Neuros can explain the functionality... Unless there is a mic i am missing and mine doesn't work. Not that I would use this feature a lot, but if it has it...
Obviously there are a few things I would change or add. Many are not feasible for the 442 as they require hardware changes, but I will be posting a few things on bugzilla and do a wishlist here as well.
Full Review of 442 Michael Smith (Yitbos96bb)
My Neuros 442 Review
I have always been a technophile. Ever since I was a little kid, I have had the urge to gets my hands on the latest and greatest gadgets. Whether video games, PCs, or video players, I had a primal need to have the newest item on the market. I bought one of the first MP3 players ever on the market, the Diamond Rio, in 1998. I purchased my XBOX on launch day. I was one of those geeks who waited in line to buy Windows 95!!!!
As I have gotten older and Mom and Dad stopped subsidizing my little addiction, I have changed a bit. I still strive to own the latest technology, however, I also look for the item that provides the best value for the money. Low cost, High value is as important as strong and powerful technology in my vocabulary. In the Neuros 442, I have found both.
When I first laid eyes on my Neuros, I was impressed with it greatly. Its chrome casing gave it a sleek look, and the unit was small enough to not be a burden to carry. While not the size of an IPOD, it is about the size of my Nintendo DS, making it very easy to carry with me.
The screen was a large size and sits right in the middle of the unit, giving ample room on each side for one to hold it in their hands. The control joystick is not bad, although I have never been super in favor of this type of interface. I would like to see this changed in future versions however, to something a little easier to use that has less of a chance of breaking.
The casing is chrome which does get smudged easily, but the unit includes a free softcase to protect the unit and keep it smudge free. I would like to see a different color however on future units... maybe Black, Blue etc.
When I turned the unit on, I was extremely impressed with the picture quality. I was just looking at the splash screen but it looked fantastic. The menu system was very intuitive and straight forward.
Transferring files to the 442 was a breeze. If you have used an external HD, you will easily be able to transfer files to the 442. No special software is needed, it is simply drag and drop. I did run into a small issue with the unit not recognizing my files, but I chalk that up to it being a beta unit. A simple re-formatting of the drive (through the 442 menus only) did the trick and fixed the issue.
The video playback on the 442 is fantastic. The quality was great and the sound quality was wonderful. I would like to see a built in speaker to allow multiple people to watch playback, but that may not be possible. It would definately be a good accessory to manufacture. It is easy to forward and reverse through a video file. There were only two complaints that I had. The first is that there is no bookmark feature. If I exit the file and then go back to it, I start from the beginning. That should be an easy fix however. The other wierd thing was that if you are in the middle of playback, you can't view other menus or turn the unti off. You have to stop playback.
The recording feature is a nice one. You plug the 442 in-line with your TV system. The quality of the recording was excellent, and it has a feature that will tell it to stop recording after a certain amount of time. The output to the TV was not super sharp, but I have not fully tested this ability. I tend to believe the issue lies not with the 442, but with the fact that the output is a progressive signal and is going into an interlaced TV. I would be curious to see the quality out to a digital TV. There is an annoying banner mid screen on the recording screen that blocks viewing until you push record. I believe this will be changed however, based on all the negative feedback. It doesn't affect quality, but it is annoying. The other major issue is that it only records in ASF. While the format is not bad, its compression is not great AND due to Microsoft's fanatical licensing issues there are not a lot of free products out there that work with it. I had a hard time finding any kind of editing software for ASF, and what I did find was not very good. However, Divx or XVID recording will probably be added as soon as possible. This was probably the most requested feature during the beta testing, along with OGG support.
Overall, I love my 442. If someone tried to take it from me, I would beat them over the head with a steel chair. It has become a part of my life, given that I take the train every morning. It beats a PSP or a PDA for watching movies because of the massive HD. It is a device that can be given to kids during car trips in lieu of a portable DVD (to protect your DVDs), can be taken on a train or plane or can just be enjoyed at home in bed without waking your spouse. One of the best things about Neuros is the community at large. You can generally get most problems solved ASAP. For example, I had issues with some of the XVID files I created myself with AutoGK. The files just would not play. I proposed the issue to the group and it was figured out pretty quick. Now there is an FAQ for doing files with AutoGK (a free program). This type of support sponsored by the company is lacking with most major manufacturers. It adds a lot of value to the product. I highly recommend the 442 and am anxiously awaiting the move to open source.
Rating - 9.1 out of 10
Pros - Easy to use, excellent picture quality, supports playback of most file formats, great sound, excellent support.
Cons - No Divx or XVID recording (yet), No OGG support (yet), No bookmark feature, No way to look at other menus while file is playing, Battery time (although this is a general complaint of PMPs. The 442 has the same battery time that a PSP and most other PMPs have.), proprietary cables to hook up to TV.
