For those of you unfamiliar with the OSD line of products, this is NOT a cable tuner or a PVR requiring a computer. It basically sits b/w your dvd player (or cable box) and your tv, it streams the video through but also makes a digital copy which it stores on an external HD that would be directly connected to the OSD (again - no computer required). The neuros not only records, it can also play files found on the harddrive.
The previous OSD made DRM free files (in *.mp4 format) that they claimed [fn1] were standard definition - this may have been technically true but the picture quality, while acceptable on a normal tv, is noticably degraded (from for example a regular / non-HD cable signal) on my 42" TV; I've tried it also on a 32" TV & there was barely any noticeable difference in quality. All this is just to say: take the 720p spec w/ a grain of salt; I'm just hoping the OSD 2.0 will give a picture quality this is indistinguishable from normal cable (or regular DVDs) - because it really is a great / unique product. No DRM, no computer required, just takes a minute to run a video signal through it & connect a harddrive.
Buyers should also consider that the first OSD was *incredibly* buggy and most of the advertised features were useless; it was a great product, but not polished enough for mass consumption. If history repeats itself, . . . (fn 2)
They're still developing the software for this one - hence releasing the *developer* kit; this is NOT simply a buggy / beta release for people who liked the OSD and want a sneak peak at the HD capabilities of the OSD 2.0 - if you buy this developer kit you only get a box of circuits with no software, i.e. recording capability (I found this out the hard-way, to their credit they offered to let me return it, i'm holding onto it though as they assured me the software to make it functional will be downloadable in the future).
It doesn't support digital inputs b/c they're scared copy-protection will limit its functionality. Hence analog inputs with the option of digital / analog outputs. There was extensive discussion about this on _one_ of neuros forums.
Footnotes ------------------------------------------------ 1. The Neuros support staff has a common response to the video quality criticism. It involves quoting technical specifications for standard definition, discussing how the OSD meets the spec, and then concluding w/ some tautology, e.g.: "I don't know what to tell you, standard definition is standard definition." So I dunno, there might be an IEEE or ISO standard about standard def. that the OSD complies w/ - but it is NOT of equal quality to a normal (non high-definition) cable signal, or even to the quality of a new VHS.
2. About the OSD not being ready for mass consumption, well it starts w/ hooking up external storage. It requires a FAT32 file system (or maybe I'm getting this backwards, any event it requires the least common of FAT32 or NTFS), and almost all the external harddrives you'll buy are NTFS. Big surprise, Win XP has no built in functionality to convert from NTFS to FAT32, so they link you to some freeware program that only works for half the people that use it, if that doesn't work they link you to another freeware program, then another. But okay, anyone that buys an OSD can do that, it would just be off-putting to a wider customer base.
More annoying, the OSD will freeze up randomly & have to be rebooted. It often begins a recording, and then stops after recording 3 or 4 seconds & the recording needs to be restarted - no big deal if you're copying a dvd - but if you had set it to record a program while you were out, you're screwed...
It's slow, sometimes during fastforwarding or rewinding it will become completely unresponsive to remote control input and you're forced to try again (after it reaches the beginning or end of the file).
The OSD user interface is dated / simple & relies on scrolling through text lists - again, not an issue for the people that did buy the OSD, but for mass consumption...
I use the OSD (original) a LOT, and this only happened once, but it glitched and made my harddrive unreadable - requiring a reformat - lost a couple hundred hours of dvds (yes I know I should have made a back up - maybe if the OSD had two USB ports & mimicked some RAID functionality . . .).
The features for picture slide shows or playing music were good ideas but not usable in practice. The picture viewer & slide shows often became unresponsive - and the music player was implemented as a list viewer that displayed something like 10 or 15 *.mp3's at a time on a scrollable list of whatever was in the folder.
And last, but not least, naming files was a pain. There was no hookup for a keyboard, you had to use the remote or move your harddrive from the OSD to your PC and use your OS to rename the files. That feature alone would make it unfit for a mass-consumption PVR.
Let's hope the OSD 2.0 is a little quicker / more responsive to input, a little more stable, supports NTFS, and if they stick w/ the file list interface they at least give us an option to adjust the text size so we can look at more than 10 or 15 files at a time, or maybe a search feature or auto scroll to files beginning with a certain letter. If they fixed that and made the video quality at least as good as normal cable - I would be in _love_ with the product. Actual support for high-def and being completely user friendly are probably unachievable goals at the moment.
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For those of you unfamiliar with the OSD line of products, this is NOT a cable tuner or a PVR requiring a computer. It basically sits b/w your dvd player (or cable box) and your tv, it streams the video through but also makes a digital copy which it stores on an external HD that would be directly connected to the OSD (again - no computer required). The neuros not only records, it can also play files found on the harddrive.
The previous OSD made DRM free files (in *.mp4 format) that they claimed [fn1] were standard definition - this may have been technically true but the picture quality, while acceptable on a normal tv, is noticably degraded (from for example a regular / non-HD cable signal) on my 42" TV; I've tried it also on a 32" TV & there was barely any noticeable difference in quality. All this is just to say: take the 720p spec w/ a grain of salt; I'm just hoping the OSD 2.0 will give a picture quality this is indistinguishable from normal cable (or regular DVDs) - because it really is a great / unique product. No DRM, no computer required, just takes a minute to run a video signal through it & connect a harddrive.
Buyers should also consider that the first OSD was *incredibly* buggy and most of the advertised features were useless; it was a great product, but not polished enough for mass consumption. If history repeats itself, . . . (fn 2)
They're still developing the software for this one - hence releasing the *developer* kit; this is NOT simply a buggy / beta release for people who liked the OSD and want a sneak peak at the HD capabilities of the OSD 2.0 - if you buy this developer kit you only get a box of circuits with no software, i.e. recording capability (I found this out the hard-way, to their credit they offered to let me return it, i'm holding onto it though as they assured me the software to make it functional will be downloadable in the future).
It doesn't support digital inputs b/c they're scared copy-protection will limit its functionality. Hence analog inputs with the option of digital / analog outputs. There was extensive discussion about this on _one_ of neuros forums.
Footnotes
------------------------------------------------
1. The Neuros support staff has a common response to the video quality criticism. It involves quoting technical specifications for standard definition, discussing how the OSD meets the spec, and then concluding w/ some tautology, e.g.: "I don't know what to tell you, standard definition is standard definition." So I dunno, there might be an IEEE or ISO standard about standard def. that the OSD complies w/ - but it is NOT of equal quality to a normal (non high-definition) cable signal, or even to the quality of a new VHS.
2. About the OSD not being ready for mass consumption, well it starts w/ hooking up external storage. It requires a FAT32 file system (or maybe I'm getting this backwards, any event it requires the least common of FAT32 or NTFS), and almost all the external harddrives you'll buy are NTFS. Big surprise, Win XP has no built in functionality to convert from NTFS to FAT32, so they link you to some freeware program that only works for half the people that use it, if that doesn't work they link you to another freeware program, then another. But okay, anyone that buys an OSD can do that, it would just be off-putting to a wider customer base.
More annoying, the OSD will freeze up randomly & have to be rebooted. It often begins a recording, and then stops after recording 3 or 4 seconds & the recording needs to be restarted - no big deal if you're copying a dvd - but if you had set it to record a program while you were out, you're screwed...
It's slow, sometimes during fastforwarding or rewinding it will become completely unresponsive to remote control input and you're forced to try again (after it reaches the beginning or end of the file).
The OSD user interface is dated / simple & relies on scrolling through text lists - again, not an issue for the people that did buy the OSD, but for mass consumption...
I use the OSD (original) a LOT, and this only happened once, but it glitched and made my harddrive unreadable - requiring a reformat - lost a couple hundred hours of dvds (yes I know I should have made a back up - maybe if the OSD had two USB ports & mimicked some RAID functionality . . .).
The features for picture slide shows or playing music were good ideas but not usable in practice. The picture viewer & slide shows often became unresponsive - and the music player was implemented as a list viewer that displayed something like 10 or 15 *.mp3's at a time on a scrollable list of whatever was in the folder.
And last, but not least, naming files was a pain. There was no hookup for a keyboard, you had to use the remote or move your harddrive from the OSD to your PC and use your OS to rename the files. That feature alone would make it unfit for a mass-consumption PVR.
Let's hope the OSD 2.0 is a little quicker / more responsive to input, a little more stable, supports NTFS, and if they stick w/ the file list interface they at least give us an option to adjust the text size so we can look at more than 10 or 15 files at a time, or maybe a search feature or auto scroll to files beginning with a certain letter. If they fixed that and made the video quality at least as good as normal cable - I would be in _love_ with the product. Actual support for high-def and being completely user friendly are probably unachievable goals at the moment.