Slashdot Mirror
Neuros - Portable MP3 player, FM radio, Digital Recorder
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?"
So what's the the plural of that?
but I wish it could be built into my mobile phone...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
It seems that they are either using freedb or something similar. Here's a clip about what the freedb.org's database is:
What is CDDB? The original CDDB is a database to look up CD information using the internet. This is done by a client which calulates a (nearly) unique disc ID and then queries the database. As a result, the client displays the artist, CD-title, tracklist and some additional infos.
Take a look at this DVD artist/title programmer submitted to Openchallenge to see how else you can utilize freedb.org.
Beats wires...
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
Looks nice! Can it run linux, it seems to have the required HW. I wounder if it has a bitmapped screen, or some custom. I'd love to run bash from it and have an IrDA keyboard...
I don't know how fast it is in beaming from one unit to another, but as the article mentions I wouldn't assume it's that fast -- just guessing, but maybe on the order of swapping one or two songs rather than several CDs within a reasonable amount of time? Much faster, and I imagine we'll be seeing the Napster debacle all over again...
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
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.
I like the feature where it can transmit music/whatever to any radio receiver - it scans the frequency range, picks a non-used frequency and starts transmitting radio. It seems to be too low-power to start your own radio station, but it should work within a normally sized home or dorm. Post a notice on the dorm's bulletin board and go DJing! A neat solution. Should work with your old car stereo too.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Its not availiable until January 2003
Could you please stop releasing new MP3 players every other day of the week.
/. opens, as the default page, not see Yet Another Cool MP3 player available.
Some people would like to be able to decide which one to buy, open Mozilla to order the one they chose and when
The 128mb version is still a little too big, and the 20gb version is obscenely big... despite the size issues it actually appears to have been made by a professional designer with a moderate amount of taste. Something most of the millions of mp3 players don't have the fortune of having.
sig.
Until I can buy it, it is vaporware.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Not really clear on the speed, but transferring 20 GB sounds like it might take a while...
Why does this really matter? So it might take a while to transfer the music, but it'll take significantly longer to listen to it. Your average user will probably transer music as necessary -- no need to shoot the entire collection over in one shot.
OS: Microsoft® Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP
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?
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
Otherwise this baby sounds like a cool gadget, but the operating temperature on the 20gb version is limited: Operating temperature: -4 to 125 degrees F It's way colder than -4 outside at the moment. Not really ideal for northern people.
# everything zen? don't think so.
"Do something man. Right now."
Seems like any new device coming out should be either firewire or usb 2.0. 20GB over USB 1.1 just seems unacceptable.
Having a closed source appliance with wireless network built in takes the conecpt of spyware to a new dimension.
;-)
Do you have ANY control over what kind of information this device shares with its real masters (remember, you are not its master, merely its owner)?
The fingerprint feature comes in handy in this scenario. Now the **AA knows exactly what music you are stealing
)9TSS
you can record 30 seconds of music you hear
Oh my god! With that kind of technology, and 6 of these things, you can copy a whole SONG without paying! It'll have to be outlawed immediately!
My question (that's actually related to this topic) is, "What should I use the portable mp3-player for?".
Since all record companies are doing their best to prevent me from transfering my legally purchased music to this player, what is it good for?
Won't the mp3-players be as useless as a betamax-player for the general public, as the copy-controlled cd's becomes more and more common?
That raises another interesting question. How long will Sony or any other large company that makes mp3-players stand for this? If people can't use the players then they won't buy it, which would hurt Sony's sales.
I'm sure someone can write some insightful comments about this.
Oh, and I returned the CD. I'm not buying broken products. And I made sure that the store understood that the failed sale was due to the record companies bad customer policy.
I play Hattrick
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
It's like moose The plural is Neuros.
Correct. Trademarks don't pluralize because they're adjectives. The plural of "Xerox copier" is "Xerox copiers", and the plural of "Neuros player" is "Neuros players".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Anyway, transferring 20gig over USB1 would take a while, but very few people have FireWire or USB2 enabled machines, so it's kind of a moot point anyway.
it's a transmitter capable of transmitting on fm frequencies you need a license for
Part 15 of FCC rules states that some low-power unlicensed intentional transmissions in the 88-108 MHz band are permitted. For instance, in the NES days, there was a peripheral called "GameSounds" that plugged into a game console's audio output and transmitted the sound over the FM band so that anybody with an FM radio within 20 feet could pick it up.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There's not much more to say about that, if it fits in my shirt pocket and I can listen to it in the car without fiddling with wires, that's very convenient. I'm intrigued.
Not to mention you don't have to spend the extra $30 at radio shack.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
If the people who allegedly want to sell you the music that you currently like are trying to make it as difficult as possible for you to enjoy said music, maybe it's time to go somewhere else.
You see, smaller bands and record labels can't afford to intentionally alienate listeners. They're trying as hard as they can to get their music heard, and they don't have a mighty fortress of cash to sustain them through the sort of foolishness in which companies such as BMG are engaging.
Check out http://www.cmj.com for what's current in college radio. Listen to a non-mainstream station. Listen to MY station
For the record, I get 10-15 or so CDs a week from various small labels (and distributors who work with labels too small to distribute their own stuff). I've NEVER had a problem with copy protection. I'ver certainly never gotten a copy protected CD from an unsigned band that I saw at a tiny bar.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Yeah. USB 1.1 "at full speed" ... Gonna wait a few hours on that one.. No'siree..
How many Euros does it cost the Neuros??
(it would be nice the answer was "NoEuros")
--
ACid
I hate how every time I go in to EB, they try to push a "game doctor" on me. Like I'm going to Pay $30 for a device to clean CD's when I can do it myself for little or no cost.
Just as a reply to your statement about pirating music and relating that to not having 128MB of mp3s... You don't have to pirate music to have way more than a few gigs of music.
1) You can mp3 your CD collection legally and have way more than that 20gig.
2) Now, if you want to stay on the safe and conservative side of the law just in case congress outlaws the backup of our CD's, you can go to www.emusic.com and legally download all the music they have for a small fee. I've paid $30 and have downloaded 4gigs of mp3's... and I'm slow about downloading stuff from them. You can easily download over a gig per day. Not only is it legal, but it compensates the artist and the label and the creator of the website.
The last thing is that just because you have all of your CD collection on your portable player doesn't mean you have to "listen to it all at once." I always have my full collection with me so I always have a full choice of what I listen to. If I'm in the mood for something in particular, it's there.
IANAL, but I play one on
One of the main features of the iPod is that you can mount it like a regular disk and just drop whatever you want on it. On the 20GB model this is a major feature, because really, do you *need* 20GB of music in your pocket (~340 hours at 128k!)? But you might need 10GB and an offsite backup of some data, or something.
Looks like this doesn't do that. Also looks like they totally stole the UI of the iPod (okay, it's a good UI, now come up with another good one). It's also damn ugly.
And why do I want to take my high-quality digital MP3s and send them over the comparatively crappy-sounding FM band to listen to them? If they really wanted to make this a home stereo component, there would be a digital out. For the car, just use a tape adapter or a line-in.
Plus the whole Windows-only thing is silly. Why do I want "synchronization software," especially from a company I've never heard of? Keep it simple.
This thing *almost* sounds really good. Almost.
You should probably change your taste in music anyway, just because most major label acts are pretty terrible. Besides, what's the point in buying music you can hear 10X daily on the radio anyway? There are other reasons to like indie bands:
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
From the spec sheet:b spec.asp
http://www.neurosaudio.com/store/prod_20g
Recording
-64-160 kbps
-MP3 format
looks to me like you can pick a bitrate between those ranges
This thing has great potential, but it has a couple flaws in my mind. The rechargeable battery inside is non-removeable, why? And if you buy the 20 gig model and later want to buy or use a 128MB attachment, you can't. For some reason, as read in the FAQ section, the 128MB model is compatible with the 20GB attachment, but the 20GB model is NOT compatible with the 128MB attachment. Why, again? These things should be completely swappable. Without having USB2.0 or Firewire, it will be a hassle to deal with the 20GB model. The recording feature is great, but you can get this on other models. I am intrigued by the 30 second music identification feature, but I don't know how much I would use it; while it is very appealing to geeks out there to play around with, it doesn't exactly strike me as a must-have feature. As said by another /.er, there are many alteratives to the FM radio transmission feature. Also, the unit is comparatively large for this type of player. I DO really like the idea of the interchangeability between the 128MB solid state model and the higher capacity hard drive. That is a must-have feature, that is, if the price difference between buying this and the other attachment is made advantageous to buying two separate players of each type. One will just have to see if it is convenient to exercize or run with the unit within its size parameters. I also am intrigued by but sceptical of the transfer feature between these players: is it a lossless digital transfer, or is the transfer made by the action of simply re-recording the FM broadcast of one of the players to the other, thereby TRANSCODING the recording within the mp3 format? If it is the latter, THAT would be ridiculous.
As one of the architects of this product, I feel obliged to clarify the open point. It is definately the vision for this product to support MODs, and much of that will be available day one. However the XML portion of the database is only supported by the application, which translates it into the database format used by the device. While we'll be publishing the documentation on the device's database, that database is a semi-proprietary format, simply due to the constraints of the device. In any case, we'll be working to support easy coding at both levels, but be patient, this is a work in process. Joe Born CTO Digital Innovations, LLC jborn@neurosaudio.com
If you're going through hell, keep going -Winston Churchill
No need to change your taste in music. If you name some popular bands that you like, I'm sure I can supply a nice list of smaller acts to get you started (if the popular acts are very recent, I might need to do some listening, as my "regular" radio has been broken for about four years).
I'm a music director at a small radio station. Suggesting music that people would like is one of the things that I do
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.