Slashdot Mirror
Neuros Review
An anonymous reader writes "MP3newswire.net has just posted a lengthy review of the Neuros digital music portable. Just recently the company announced native Linux support for synchronizing the Neuros and we all know that Ogg Vorbis support is promised in the near future, so the unit is drawing a lot of interest. For the most part they liked the player, though they found the unit to be relatively big and heavy for a new generation portable. They also found the file transfer interface to be both impressive and glitchy."
Much like Slashdot!
Ogg support? I wouldn't buy one UNTIL they actually have the support up and running.
If they can comeout with a timeline for ogg support and the price is competitive I will buy one.
comment directly in my journal
This is slightly off-topic, but slashdot apple while we're at it requesting ogg-vorbis support! Do so nicely, but be firm. Let them know you have music that can't be played without hacking iTunes, and you can't play it back at all on your iPod.
Let them know your future business depends on it!
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I heard from a good source that Ogg Vorbis was also going to also be developed into a video codec with better quality than divX (MPEG4) and even smaller filesizes. woohoo!
Heh. Nice linkeage. Why be deceptive though? You could just come right out and let people know what it is. Might get more clicks that way too. ;)
While we're stacking links, Get Ogg on the iPod!
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
does it run linux?
I hope it doesn't contain any unlicensed Unix code like linux has.
That link sends a nasty e-mail via feedback form to SCO. It has NOTHING to do with portable audio players.
I always based my buying habits on the premise that the two were mutually exclusive, but I guess I'm just a picky customer.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Let them know your future business depends on it!
Not to try and flame you, but isn't that a bit of an empty threat at the moment, considering ogg-vorbis mindshare in the general public?
It'd be a nice "geek" feature, i'm sure, but I don't think it's really at the level where Apple will take lost business because of it very seriously.
Maybe i'll just buy an mp3 player.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Umm why on earth does a linux based mp3 player not have a way to sync or simply download music from linux itself? Or did I miss that while crawling all over their site?
I wonder how many posts it will take before an Apple/iPod user says the Neuros sucks?
Impressively glitchy? :)
Just make it work. I want a 100% certainty that I will be able to migrate music from my linux box to the player. No message board lurking, no sifting through google groups.
If this product cannot reliably transfer music without copious under the hood tweaking, I am not interested.
USB 2.0 would be a nice addition too but even on that I will make accomodation.
2.5 inch hard drives, the same drives used in notebooks can cost from 100 to 300 bucks. Here's a link. And the ipod is not for the rich. I have one, and I sure as hell am not rich.
...is from USA today. Bottom line, Neuros doesn't match up to the iPod, at least not yet.
apple is already a niche player, what makes you think expanding to other niches isn't important to them?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Eh??? $50 for a hard drive that small - surely you jest.
These numbers are about a year old, so scale up the size of the drive slightly to get the current price. But a 5GB MK5002MPL hard disk drive is priced at US$399
Apple surely gets the drives in volume discount, but the price of an ipod is definitely not unreasonable.
It's pretty expensive on amazon. 128mb for 240$ and 20gb for $380. You can get an Apple Ipod 10gb for 280$
Otherwise I wouldn't see full-page magazine ads touting 'the power unix', and giving details on power-user experiences converting from (insert your unix flavor here) to OSX.
Don't underestimate yourself before you make an effort at asserting what you want. You just never know...
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Hmm. Let's see. If we want to support Ogg, we'll have to pay six guys for a year to add it to the iPod, QuickTime and iTunes. At which point, every nerd in the world will rush out and buy our stuff, right? Uh... wrong. Because they'll demand that it work with this "Leenux" thing they keep nagging us about. So then we'll port iTunes to "Leenux" and then they'll buy our stuff, right? Uh... wrong. Because they'll complain that our software isn't "free," even though we give it away on the web site. Yeah, I know, makes no sense.
But even if we bend over backwards, fuck ourselves completely, and give these guys everything they want, how many iPods will we sell?
Eleven.
That's right, eleven.
Fuck it. Let's stick to what we do best.
--Steve
I found today's PA comic kind of funny and rather fitting. I love my MP3 player, but it is a Rio500 w/128 MB of storage. I haven't seen the need to plunk down the cash for one of these big dogs yet.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Honestly, I'm impressed that companies are starting to get the idea that they can offer something for everyone. I think you'll start to see more devices with multiple storage options, multiple formats, etc. The next step I'd like to see (since most companies won't open source their code) is built-in "modules" so additional features (and/or hardware) can be added by third party companies. --Darren p.s. I still like my Archos Multimedia, especially for the price.
The best part about the Neuros is that it based on an open architecture. Basiclly gives you the option of making it into whatever you want.
My good friend has one, and he loves it. It is a really nice portable mp3 player. He was able to develop a program so that it automaticly sends his voice mail (in mp3 format) to his Neuros. The only thing that I didn't like about it is that it is bigger than most mp3 players. Especially when you add on the 20 gig backpack to it. Awsome features! Fm transmitter, ogg mp3 wma support, and good battery life.
Every Super Villan uses Linux.
What advantages does this have over the Archos player? It's cheaper, has the same amount of drive space, and plays video.
a il /
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/mp3/5b44/det
-Derick
Just for the lazy people who can't be bothered to check, on Amazon.com right now, the 20gb Neuros is the same price as the 15gb iPod - $380.
This means 5gb more for your money with the Neuros - you decide.
Also, drop me your mailing address, too; I might be able to send you extra goodies. Don't worry, I'll make sure your E-mail address and mailing address are kept private. Thanks!
Emmett Plant
Community Outreach
Neuros Audio
"drawing a lot of interest"? From who? Most of the world hasn't even heard of Ogg Vorbis, people. Most who have heard of Ogg Vorbis realize it may sound better at lower bitrates, but nobody wants to re-encode all their CDs and stuff. So let's can the editorializing, okay?
Oh, and to all the people who are rabidly trying to convince Apple via silly little petitions(I bet half a week's iPod sales are bigger than the # of people who have signed any such petition)- give it up. They've got AAC, they could give a crap about Ogg, and they've said as much. Stop trying to force your stuff on the world- if there's a genuine market for Ogg, companies will recognize the need to support it.
Please help metamoderate.
Well I've got an IPOD. The firewire transfer rocks!
And it works with my MacOSX box and my Linux Box
without a problem.
I'm working on some management tools for the IPOD on Linux now.
Good point, I think Ogg-Vorbis support would be a niche-niche, if there is such a thing, though.
Consider...It would be an area in which the consumer:
A) Knows that portable music players besides CD players and Walkmans exist in the first place, and wants one.
B) Is interested and knowledgeable enough to go after an (expensive) Apple product in the first place.
C) Knows that Ogg-Vorbis even exists in the first place.
D) Cares enough about format differences to have a need to play Ogg-Vorbis files.
Again, that just doesn't seem like a big enough market for Apple to care. Please feel free to correct me with actual statistics if you have them, though.
The fact that Ogg Vorbis has been out there since before iPod and they still don't support it?
I do not have a signature
They let you replace the damn batterys ;)
Until then I have my trusty AM/FM radio.
Mod me down im a newf (wiki)
MyFi is Neuros' name for the novel FM broadcast feature on the player. Using this feature, one can set the unit to transmit music files remotely through an empty FM frequency on any radio. The advantages are self-evident for anyone who has ever user a cassette adapter to connect their CD player to a car radio, and it is one of the most innovative and convenient features of the Neuros.
Wow. And wow. This is an amazingly cool idea, and not confined to the car.
How about the fact that two years ago, there was no Apple iPod, and now roughly 1 in 4 portable music players is an iPod?
Or the fact that until two months ago WMA was second to MP3, in marketshare, but now (with something like 3 million tracks sold) AAC is #2, despite only 3% of the potential market?
So far, far, more unlikely things have happened than Apple support Ogg; I mean, Apple supported MP3, right?
GPL Deconstructed
The iPod actually has a 1.8" drive in it. I don't know if this is still true, but when the original 5 GB iPod came out, the retail version of the hard drive they were using, just by itself, cost $399. Same price as the iPod. So basically when you bought an iPod, you bought the hard drive and got all the guts for free.
The iPod is priced right where it oughta be. Sure, we'd all like 'em to be cheaper, but if ifs and buts were candy and nuts... how does that saying go?
"...the Neuros offers features not only unavailable in the iPod..."
"The Neuros has features that could make it an iPod killer..."
It turns out that the only "killer" feature I could come across was "HiSi"(records 30 seconds of radio, then tries to fingerprint it and match the fingerprint to a central database), and the reviewers found it thought random noise was "Benditos Malditos". It thought a rap song was Van Halen. It only managed to recognize two popular songs- and what's the point? Everyone knows the titles of popular songs on the radio. That's a "killer feature"? Nevermind that you're handing them all sorts of listening habit data.
Oh, what's that you say? "It has a radio, that's a killer feature!" Um, if you've got 30GB of MP3s, and you can get the very latest songs off iTunes music service for a buck apiece, why would you want to listen to the radio? Maybe for news or something while riding the commuter train, but you can get practically microscopic FM receivers and just plug the headphones into that if you wanna listen to the radio. It's not about what you think is "cool", it's about what the consumer wants- and my guess is that Apple found most people didn't care about an FM receiver. Can't argue with them, the iPod's STILL the fastest selling player.
What's that you say? "Ogg Vorbis is a killer feature!" Most of the world doesn't even KNOW what Ogg-Vorbis is. The rest don't want to bother reencoding all their CDs, and you can't buy Ogg Vorbis songs ANYWAY. Ogg Vorbis, for now, is moot...and with AAC, do you seriously think Ogg Vorbis will ever be anything more than a plaything of the Super Nerds?
Sorry, this thing is a non-contender for the iPod. It's enormous, heavy, has a completely unoriginal design, and various issues in implementation, like the song title display problem they mention. The iPod is elegant, small, lightweight, and has a simple, good UI(not to mention, read-only address book/calendar stuff). Ogg Vorbis and a radio aren't going to make up for that.
Please help metamoderate.
.. they'll complain that our software isn't "free,"...
Absolutely true. Everybody knows that Windows users ALWAYS pay for software. It's a well known fact that there hasn't been a pirated copy of Windows, Office, or any other Windows Warez since 1992 at the latest, around the time Linux came about. Coincidence? I don't think so. In fact, all those Linux Warez sites are proof positive that those thieving Linux users will never pay for software. The same goes for P2P software. Look at all those Kazaa for Linux users out there. I mean if a version of Kazaa for Windows existed not a single Windows user would use it because they ALWAY pay for everything be it software or music. In fact, there will never be a Windows version of Kazaa for this very reason.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
..the record support, FM transmit, etc. BUT will not buy it.
It only has 128MB flash builtin, if they had a CF slot instead then I'd buy one tomorrow. CF allows for more flexibility and better overall experience.
I've been debating between this and the NEXII and I can't decide!
did you ever post on adequacy.org?
Here's another petition on Apple's own boards.
Giving it a bump certainly couldn't hurt. The people are there...and where there's people, there's money to be made.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Here.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
I agree. I haven't been rich since I bought the iPod and Apple opened their iTunes store!
Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.
RTF Produce Spec
Clearly states USB 1.1.
USB 2.0 support is coming, but not here now.
This device would be useful to live concert tapers but alas it does not offer support for the wav format.
And before one of you geeks pipes up with (well ogg is just as good), try taking an ogg compressed reocording over to etree and trading it without being laughed outta there chat room.
Aside from the radio features, this player looks way over-priced. I just bought a Mambo X for my girlfriend, and so far she and I have been really happy with it. In a nutshell, $200 gets you 20G, USB mass-storage interface (no need to use a sync manager -- you just have direct access to the drive), MP3 and WMA support (and yes, the vendor has committed to supporting Ogg Vorbis), audio record, and Li ion battery.
It isn't glorious or beautiful (iPods certainly are cute), but it works really well, is fast, CHEAP, high-capacity, and really light.
And, no, I'm not associated with the company in any way. But if you are already looking at the Neuros, you should be aware that there are products that cost half as much, and have 95% of the features. (The radio thing is neat, but we don't care -- headphones are the only thing that will be plugged into it.)
impressive and glitchy, sounds like a POS to me..what is the big deal about "portable" music players anyway? Are they some kind of new thing? NOT!
how do these people expect to sell these products when at one point they say it plays mp3's and is a tuner. then in another seprate review it transmits music over radio.
the description on amazon (which the article links directly to) is abhorent.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
On the other hand, the Rio Pearl (though it's not shipping yet) does OGG, MP3, WMA, FLAC and WAV. And crossfading. And parametric EQ. And the battery lasts much longer. And it's very small and light. And it has 100Mbit ethernet (as well as USB2.0) with a built in webserver and Java music management apps for linux users.
What would you prefer?
See http://www.dapreview.com for more info.
Note: I'm biased. I'm working on it.
On the plus side, they do look cute, and fit in most pockets easily. Well done to Apple for figuring that a large proportion of potential MP3 player buyers are not interested in advanced features, and will pay a significant premium for compactness and a simple, constrained interface.
In the 90s, AOL similarly spotted that they could capture a large proportion of online users by offering a simple, integrated system. I think iPods are "training wheel" MP3 players for many people. It remains to be seen whether Apple can manage their new users' experience growth and release more compelling iPods using latest technologies so that these maturing users graduate to more fully-featured iPods and do not desert to other manufacturer's media player offerings.
Da Blog
Don't you know that more features makes a better product, even if the features aren't usable?!
Just one failure in your implied assumptions: Those aren't independant variables. So the set of people for whom A and B and C and D applies is much less than A'*B'*C'*D' (where prime is the percentage of the population within that set).
Consider: All members of population D will always already be a member of population C, and almost always a member of population A. Population B consists of Apple's complete potential market, so of course their goal is to saturate that population as completely as possible. So, the question is now how many people are members of A, B, C and D but only how much overlap there is between populations D and B. Since these are already by nature similiar (being members of the set of people who are willing to be nonconformists with regard to chosen computing technologies to use what they believe to be the best available option), it's not far-fetched to believe this overlap to be substantial.
Where have u been? The iPod is not a niche player. You dont' find the niche player as the only hard drive based player in many major retailers all over the US.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
Forget them... CompactFlash cards, and hard drives are far to expensive for their capacity. Not to mention that they are both power-draining monsters.
What I want more than anything else is an Ogg player that will play files from a MiniCD. I would go for a regular-sized Ogg/CD player, but I think they would be too big for my taste, and I bet spinning a MiniCD would be far less power-consuming.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I wonder what it does for on Amazon. I'd pay $100-$150 for it, tops.
I find it rather interesting that MP3Newswire gushed on and on about all the cool features, but said very little about how well they worked. Whereas USA Today reported various problems in detail. Is somebody sucking up to the manufacturer in order to get a freebie?
Um. Did you reply to the wrong post or something? WTF?
not anymore anyway..
Does anyone know if any of these drive-based MP3 players have data retrieval functions like a PDA? I'd rather not carry around two gadgets, and I'd use the music playback more than the PDA functionality.
I have a neuros, and have used the HiSi feature from time to time. I would estimate that I've identified 50 tracks from it, and only had one failure, on a clip of me humming the tune.
One possible future use of HiSi that has been mentioned on the forums is ID3 tag correction. Since most downloaded MP3s have missing, incorrect, or mangled tags, this would be a nice use of the technology.
Why would I listen to the radio? In tornado alley, one likes to have a radio around from time to time.
MyFi is a very nice feature, broadcasting the unit's playback through your car's stereo.
Address book and calendar? That is what my Palm does.
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
I'm a geeky person that supports a bunch of no budget audio reporters that use mini disc recorders. I'd love to get them to use a product like this but a mic input is a requirement for field audio reporting. Any chance of that happening soon?
The feature of not having to capture the audio in realtime from the MD to begin editing alone would make the switch worth it.
Does anyone know if the Neuros can be used as a regular USB hard drive as well? That is, I plug it in and it appears to my OS as just another drive that I can copy any file to (or from).
Or can I only put music files on it using the proprietary interface/sync program?
This is one of my requirements for any portable device. If I just bought a 20GB portable hard drive, I want to be able to put any damn file I want on it and not have to use a particular program to do it.
Ipod still is expensive. And moderators are 10 year olds.
Pah! When is someone going to develop a Vorbis based music player? Where's that project to por tLinux to the ipod going?
OK, I'm just grouchy because every indication is that all the useful software updates in the new ipods are not going to be ported back to the old versions (i.e. mine!).
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
First off, this player has features that I don't want. It's impressive, I grant you, but I have no desire nor need for a built in FM broadcaster, nor for song recognition, nor for recording capabilities.
I will buy a portable MP3 player when the following requirements are met:
-The device must have at least 20 gig storage.
-The device must be portable and reasonably small. I'm not talking iPod small, I could care less about that size. This one is a fine size.
-The device must support a FireWire connection. Fsck USB 2.0.
-The interface to load songs on can have special software if you like, but it must also have the capability to simply appear to my PC as a HARD DRIVE. What better way to make moving files around easy? What better open architecture than to simply let anyone write software that can do a simple COPY to move files to the unit?
-The device must have a DOCKING STATION. I'm tired of dealing with cables.
-The Docking Station, or a separate docking station, must have the capability for in-car mounting. This could be a hack it in there yourself kind of deal if needs be. The short answer is that the docking station that could be mounted in a car must have audio outputs. The preferable answer is that the docking station should have a way to feed it power to recharge the device, and it would be nice if there was a way I could control the device's playback via some kind of serial or IR interface as well. I can come up with my own device to convert my car's controls or steering wheel controls into serial or IR commands to the unit. There's a load of ways to do this, so provide me an input on the dock to interface to.
That's it. Satisfy those and I'll buy it. This is the first device I've seen that can do this sort of thing via some kind of add on module, so it has potential, but it's not there yet.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
FUD. Vaporware.
Which name do you prefer?
Apple want people using components of MPEG-4, not some random audio format that really isn't supported by any of the big players of the industry.
It's in Apple's best interests for MPEG-4 to take off. And that's why neither iTunes or iPod will ever officially support Vorbis.
An iPod bought in October 2001 with software 1.0 is compatible with Apple's latest update, 1.3.
There's nothing unupgradable about the iPod, dear.
In your parent post you acted like this was some cool new idea. You've since been shown it's not, and you're trying to twist around what you said.
Doublethink only works when you're able to delete all reference to the original statement.
Um equivalently featured? One of the major features of the iPod is the size. Beyond that, I have yet to see any mp3 player that has as elegant a solution to navigation.
They have no digital line-in recording, no mic facility, no FM radio, and no easy way for users to replace or expand the device's batteries or hard drive.
True, and for the majority of people out there, an mp3 player is supposed to play mp3s, not act like a bunch of other things. Also, how many players allow expanding batteries?
Unlike most of the new generation media players they also feature no MPEG 4 video playback or recording.
Right, video on a 2" is useful. Again, this is an mp3 player, not a video camera.
They have a weird, all-or-nothing metadata approach to storing music that forces you to use the moderately featured iTunes freeware to utilise the iPod to its fullest instead of being able to use some other full-featured, non-freeware media jukebox software.
This is where I decided I had to reply. iTunes is far and away the best music manager/player that I've ever used, and beyond that it is *free*. Apple again shows that they just seem to get it. iTunes makes managing a huge collection trivial in ways that are so easy it's silly. I looked and looked for a system that could deal with a large library (3000 ish songs) in a useful, *quick* manner and never found one. Then I got iTunes and realized the search was over. On-the-fly searching through 3000 songs? Integrated ripping, tagging, & burning all well done. (For example, when editing the tags, you have type-ahead completion for artist & album.) I'm honestly curious what mp3 manager you use that makes iTunes look moderately featured. As for your dig about freeware vs non-freeware, I don't understand. The implication is that being freeware makes it inferior in some way, surely this isn't what you mean.
On the plus side, they do look cute, and fit in most pockets easily.
The latter of which matters to me, the former of which matters to a *lot* of people.
think iPods are "training wheel" MP3 players for many people. It remains to be seen whether Apple can manage their new users' experience growth and release more compelling iPods using latest technologies so that these maturing users graduate to more fully-featured iPods and do not desert to other manufacturer's media player offerings.
My god, it's an mp3 player. Period. And a damn good one. This isn't like learning to ride a bike, this is listening to music. Sometimes you get a product right and don't need to continually add bells and whistles. I have yet to see very many overly compelling features anywhere else (the fm transmitter might be the exception, though I'm happier with one I can remove like an iTrip than one permanently adding weight). Some of us want a great mp3 player that doesn't think it needs to be a geek swiss-army knife.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Yet... look at IE, Gecko, and KHTML. Apple's best interests are it's best interests, and supporting Ogg does not interfere with Apple's goals of getting AAC supported by the industry.
:)
If Ogg gets a foothold, due to Apple, it means that Microsoft loses dominance because of the existence of 4 widely supported standards (Ogg, MP3, AAC, and WMA), and as long as that's true, it means Microsoft can't easily manhandle the market.
It is true that supporting Ogg divides Apple's limited resources, but it isn't something that denies the success of mpeg-4 or AAC
GPL Deconstructed
...your posts would be treated with more creditability.
In the meantime, if you're going to continue to post two line comments riddled with spelling and grammar errors, expect to be moderated down.
Welcome to the world of grown-ups.
For my needs I use Media Jukebox (just check my profile for all the times I repeat myself!). Windows only, sadly for MacOS people.
It's got an amazingly well thought out, context switchable "Now Playing" UI feature. I know something like this also exists in iTunes, but MJ's is more expressive. It's basically a pop stack which a variety of selectable behaviours. So say you are playing a Playlist or random set of tunes and you want to add some more items to your "Now Playing". You have a bunch of choices: Within the "Playing Now" display field, you can also add HTML and Flash objects and take input from the ID3 tags, so you can customize your own jukebox front end. The interface toggles between mini and maxi skinnable modes.
The visual effects studio lets you construct your own graphical filters, operators, and expressions to transformthe sound input into graphical output. The SFX Studio and the amazingly well done Tagging Editor are, IMHO, what puts MJ above all other jukebox choices. You can literally customize it to your heart's content.
Of course, there are all the usual plugins, streams, stream serving, burning, stripping, and transcoding... It even has iPod support!
So I'm not saying iTunes is bad, I'm just saying that it is a *moderate* piece of jukebox software that adds value to Apple's primary profit driver: the iPod. Maybe if the new music store continues to be successful, then Apple will put more resources into enhancing the iTunes interface and functionality.
However, currently the difference in product design and execution between a dedicated, media jukebox company and a hardware manufacturer producing some pack-in software to enhance their handheld is quite large.
The MacOS platform is rather lacking for choice and depth of good media jukebox software, so that's why iTunes and streams are such a bigger deal for that platform. But it does lead to a kind of wilful ignorance and disinclination to learn from or appreciate great software found on other platforms, such as WIndows or Linux.
Da Blog
Every post from you is Anti-Apple and a plug for Media Jukebox. Please go peddle your warez elsewherez.