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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?"

14 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Neuros? by Anik315 · · Score: 4, Funny

    So what's the the plural of that?

    1. Re:Neuros? by cioxx · · Score: 4, Funny

      box - boxen
      neuros - neurosen

  2. 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...

  3. 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
  4. 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.
  5. Radio, wall of sound by richie2000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  6. Shipping Date by kaptkudzoo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Its not availiable until January 2003

  7. 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. ;)

  8. How in the name of the lord.... by Dot.Com.CEO · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Can someone request a review for something that in not even on sale yet!!!!!

    Until I can buy it, it is vaporware.

    --
    Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
  9. System requirements by Zayin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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"
    1. 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).

  10. fingerprinting! by krazyninja · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Sonicblue introduced the fingerprinting functionality in its Rio series of players. It used Moodlogic database. That database had a good number of songs...But with this Neuros database, being proprietary, it has to be seen how much of use it can be, unless it has a large database it has. It is possible that they have a deal with some other fingerprinting companies.....

    --
    "Do something man. Right now."
  11. But but but... by haeger · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This weekend I bought a CD. It was copy-controlled and as such unplayable on my Linux-machine. It had some windows-player that was supposed to play the cd if I had put it in a Win-machine. But naturally it wouldn't let me create mp3's from it.

    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.

    .haeger


    I play Hattrick

    --
    You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
  12. Trademark adjective by yerricde · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?