Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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130 of 132 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A B+ player, May 31, 2007
As someone who spends a lot of time on planes and subways I have been looking for a way to easily take TV shows with me. I have a Dell Axim x51v PDA and a Creative Zen Vision:M and use both to play video files.
My holy grail was to be able to record a show and be able to play it on both players without having to spend time converting these files. I also own a Slingbox and, until I bought the OSD, used Applan's At Large Recorder to record the Slingbox stream into wmv files which I then copied onto an SD card and used on my Dell. Unfortunately the At Large Recorder ties up your computer, is prone to crashing and doesn't always record the right channel at the right time, so my search continued.
Neuros OSD
The OSD is small, very easy to set up. It comes with the necessary cords and remote control. All the inputs and outputs are well marked and intuitive. This was an easy set up. The process of setting the IR blaster codes was also easy. (This makes it possible for the OSD to change the channel to the show you want to record.) Instead of wading through lists to find your cable box model, you just put your cable box remote control at it, press each digit and the OSD "learns" the codes. It detected the 2GB card I inserted and the external hard drive I connected (make sure your drive has a FAT32 file system, not NTFS as that isn't supported yet) and the navigation is like windows explorer. Using a wireless bridge, I connected it to the internet so that it can update the firmware on its own. It was easy to set the clock (which uses 12 or 24h time) and have everything up and running in no time. Strangely, it comes with a stand that is easy to knock over so after a few falls, I put the stand back into the box and do without.
I've played a few Xvid movies that I have encoded using DVD Decrypter and AutoGK and they play with no problems. The picture quality and sounds were as good as DVD. The quality will depend on the bitrate and other specs and some experimenting is necessary to find what works.
How is recording? Well, it's about 90% of the way there. I recorded a few shows off the TV and then played them to see what the picture and sound quality were like. I used the TV setting with Superfine quality and then tried the the "Advanced" setting, set the resolution at 640x480, put the Video Bitrate at 2500 kbps and the frame rate at 30fps. Even on these settings you can see a degradation in picture quality. While it advertises that you can use this to back up your DVDs, keep in mind that the finished product isn't going to be DVD quality. The picture quality on a regular (SD) set is good, not great. And there is a difference in picture quality between saving your files to an SD card versus an external hard drive. Programs saved to the hard drive look much better than the SD card and there is a noticeable improvement using S-video over Composite. I have also read in a forum that there are problems with recording a show that last longer than 2 hours.
Scheduling recordings is a bit quirky. I have tried scheduling a daily recording of the news to save directly to my SD card so I can pull it out and throw it in my Dell on my way out the door. It stops recording after a couple days for no apparent reason, even when there's room on the card and it was just formatted. But when I save the recording to the hard drive, it works properly, indefinitely.
My Dell Axim can pretty much handle anything the OSD threw at it. It could handle the top bitrate/resolution with ease. (My coworker, who also owns the OSD, had to reduce the fps to 15 in order to make the shows play on his Smartphone, so again you may want to experiment.) While the picture was more crisp than my Slingbox/At Large Recorder set up, the picture had some colour blocks in the darker colour ranges (blacks, dark greys, dark browns) at all the settings, which is a minor annoyance. But it isn't a deal breaker for me. I don't need a perfect picture on my Dell to enjoy the show. And while there are preset settings for the iPod and PSP, there isn't anything for the Creative Zen Vision:M and I couldn't find a way to transfer the files without conversion. It would be great to record a show, put in on my Creative and then hook up the video output cables on another TV and watch it there.
Overall, I am happy with it. This is Linux based, open source software and Neuros offers money to developers to tweak, fix and add features. So as time goes on, I remain hopeful that the picture quality will continue to improve and some of the quirks fixed.
UPDATE (10/26/07): The have released new firmware that finally brings the video quality when recording close to the original picture. You'll still see some degradation on fast motion shots, so you'll notice it when you record hockey or football games, but on regular programming it was fine. I recorded a nature program using the highest settings and couldn't see any difference from the original.
There is also support for viewing You Tube Video (though vids on You Tube generally aren't high enough quality to look good on regular TV) and there is a feature you can view photos and listen to mp3 files, though I find the set up and navigation clunky.
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43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quiet and legal, February 2, 2008
When I tell my friends what I have, I am met with blank stares. I understand them. It is a revolutionary product whose sole function is to turn video from any source into MPEG-4
Now MPEG-4 is the format that a DVR such as TiVO uses to store all your reruns of The Daily Show. More importantly it is the very format that your iPod uses to play video. Even if you are enough of a techie to get those Jon Stewart pieces off of your TiVo and into your iPod, this is only a partial solution to a much bigger problem-how in the heck can you copy your favorite DVDs onto your iPod?
The Neuros OSD is the answer. Basically it takes video-cable TV, DVD, camcorder, and even old VHS tapes and converts them automatically to MPEG-4. Once converted you can load it onto your iPod, or play it on your computer, or just store it forever on an external hard drive.
This product is a video converter and not a storage facility. You are going to need something to store its output. My first solution was to purchase an inexpensive 500 GB external hard disk. This works fine but it is a little like using an elephant gun to bring down a field mouse. The OSD has memory card slots. since a two hour DVD turned into a MPEG-4 has a footprint of less than one GB, a 2 GB SD card should be more than sufficient for most purposes. But SD cards are coming down in price as well. I have tried using 8GB and 4GB cards without success. Stick to the 2GB until the firmware is revised to accept the larger cards.
Now your iPod can be your storage device but it is necessary to put and keep it in the manual sync mode, and for me anyway that defeats some of the great joys of iPod ownership. Once on a hard drive or memory card it requires only a simple import command to load it onto your iPod.
Some of my friends when seeing this opine that they will wait till the OSD produces copies in HD. I do not see that anytime soon. First if you are going to watch it on your iPod or on your laptop how would you know if it was recorded in HD or not? Secondly the foot print of an HD recording on an HD recorder is about 5 times larger than a standard MPEG-4. Finally the really good stuff, the 1080p DVDs are exclusively the province of Blu-ray and (for a while anyway) Toshiba's HD DVD system. These disks are extremely complex electronically and simple conversion technologies will probably not produce comparable copies.
There are a few negatives. The interface, accessed with a remote, is clunky. It is a dumb device so you will need to name every recording you make. Otherwise you will have a whole bunch of video named "OSD.mp4". You also have to set the record time. The default time is 30 minutes, although changing the defaults is relatively easy.
Firmware updates are frequent. One solution is to check monthly or so and download onto the CF card that comes with the unit. An even better solution is to hook the OSD onto a home network and set it for automatic updates. This will require an ethernet connection.
As a final note, this appears to produce legal copies for personal use. Although I am a lawyer, this should not be considered legal advice. Ultimately courts will decide and they may agree or disagree with me. But it is certainly possible to misuse the MPEG-4s you create and to violate copyright laws.
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35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Couch potato?, May 22, 2007
The Neuros OSD promises to free your media. Why?
We all know DRM is rife, and it's not fair. Yet manufacturers still encumber their products with annoying restrictions to prevent theft of copywritten material, rather than trust their consumers. TiVo messes up recording so you can't watch them on your computer. Apple TV won't even touch your DVD rips. What has made us consumers so bloody complacent?
My OSD sits proudly on my tv, it streams all my videos from both my USB HD and computer via network cable. Different file formats (non-DRM of course) don't faze it, it just plays it. That's what I use it for, 99% of the time. Nice & simple.
I can record any input to mpeg file, so I don't need a VCR no more. I can play & edit these files on my laptop, no restrictions. Yay!
There are problems, high bitrate (DVD stardard) files result in frame drops, which is disappointing. High definition is a no no, which doesn't bother me really, I'm not buying into this fad. The GUI is not pretty & remote feels slow. Subtitles aren't supported, but I've been told (the Neuros community is very open & talkative) it's coming with a firmware update. As is an EPG and wifi support.
The OSD promises a lot, I think it already delivers about 90% - it plays & records well with no restrictions. The last 10% has to be seen, for work still has to be done.
Summary: With the OSD, you can enjoy your video from your couch. That's freedom.
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