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Neuros - Portable MP3 player, FM radio, Digital Recorder

Posted by Hemos on from the make-the-pretty-noise dept.

KenMaier writes "Interesting new product in the portable MP3 player space -- this portable 'Neuros' from Digital Innovations comes with either 128MB or 20GB storage, built-in FM radio and a built-in digital recorder. Two interesting features -- you can record 30 seconds of music you hear and it will 'fingerprint' the song and tell you the title and artist. Also, a built-in wireless feature lets you beam music from one Neuros to another. Not really clear on the speed, but transferring 20 GB sounds like it might take a while. If anyone owns one of these care to post a review?"

6 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. FM radio is a *transmitter* by Mwongozi · · Score: 5, Informative
    That's possibly the coolest feature. It will broadcast the music on low-power FM, so that any FM radio in your house can pick it up.

    Beats wires...

  2. Same for your UK mobile by semaj · · Score: 5, Informative

    What you want is Shazam - assuming you're in the UK that is! :-)

    You dial a number, play a bit of music down the phone and you get an SMS message back identifying the artist and title, pretty nifty. It costs about 50p though. They add the "tagged" tracks to a personalised list on their site where you can buy them online and other neat stuff.

    --
    Meep meep
  3. Make sure to vote! by 10Ghz · · Score: 5, Informative

    They have a survey with one question being "What music format would you like Neuros to support besides mp3?". One choice is Ogg Vorbis.

    --
    Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
  4. Shipping Date by kaptkudzoo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Its not availiable until January 2003

  5. Re:Fingerprints by pwarf · · Score: 5, Informative

    Similar in functionality, but the key here is that they claim they can do it for an arbitrary 30 second clip from radio or an unlabeled MP3 rather than a static arrangement of data on a CD.

    This sounds much harder, but also more useful. I'd be very (pleasantly) surprised if it works well for anything other than Billboard hits and very popular oldies. Still, it could be nice.

    Just for the record, the player can also record longer clips by pressing the record button twice.

    Also, someone said something earlier about not knowing how long the wireless transfer would take. Well, from the site it seemed that it was transfer via FM radio at the speed you'd normally play it at. So, neat for wireless playing on a car audio system or the boombox at home/work, but not a major file-transfer tool. (You could still broadcast to another unit and record the FM broadcast on the other unit.)

    The site said recording was to MP3, but didn't specify bit-rate. Anyone know? Other MP3 players that recorded have done so in such low rates that they would only be useful for recording speech.

    Also, they have a survey about what other audio formats you'd like to see supported. It wouldn't hurt for all you Ogg Vorbis devotees to go skew the results of the poll. ;)

  6. Re:System requirements by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative
    This really annoys the h#!! out of me... Most mp3-player manufacturers do this. What is the problem with just making a player that acts as an USB hard drive? Why do we need Windows to transfer files through USB?

    Relax! Then go read this. The Neuros is based on (in their words) "an open platform". Unlike the iPod, their database and menu systems are open and based on XML (schemas coming in a few weeks apparently), so even though their synchro software is currently Windows only, making a Linux version should be a snap.

    This is a pretty cool MP3 player. It looks good, has some nify features, and is open. Sounds like a serious contender to the iPod to me (at least for anybody semi-geeky).