First Impressions of the Neuros Link

DeviceGuru writes "Having recently constructed the BoxeeBox, DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum naturally was eager to check out Neuros Technology's somewhat similar IP-TV set-top box. Lehrbaum's first-impressions review of the Neuros Link describes the device's hardware and Ubuntu-based software, shows screenshots of its functionality, identifies a handful of weak spots, offers some specific suggestions for improvement, and shares a few hacks (including adding an HDD and Boxee). All in all, he concludes, the Link's hardware is more than worth its minimal $300 pricetag."

Comments

Review misses important point

[horza]

The review misses one of the most important things in a home media device which is: is it fan-less and how noisy is it?

It also mentions MythTV but doesn't do any form of comparison to the main alternative.

Finally it mentions Hulu as the main media portal... and fails to mention this isn't accessible outside of the USA.

Phillip.

Re:Sounds nice but

[JoeBorn]

I'm from Neuros for those that don't already know, I'll answer the x86 v embedded elsewhere. Regarding economies of scale, let's look at it a different way. As many of you know, Neuros history is in embedded systems from scratch. This is our first x86 project as well as the first using off the shelf components. We actually did it because of the economies of scale advantage. The PC industry has such an established supply chain, with such huge volumes that its creates a huge advantage. You have to live with x86 plusses and minuses, which, again I'll address separately. But if you favor x86, which obviously we do for this currently. Sticking with off the shelf makes sense (at least to start). As posted elsewhere, this MB *at retail* is $80 that's really quiet a value for that piece of hardware. Look at the GPU, and the host of peripherals and expansion. Firewire, tons of USB, s/pdif, 7.1 audio, HDMI, DVI, VGA, PCI, SATA, etc. Sure, much of that is worthless for a mainstream wal-mart product, but not for a Gamma launch to folks that want to experiment and play around. Likewise with the case, it's nice having size for a internal 3.5" drive, and/or an optical drive. The case could be smaller certainly, but today, it's the size of a TiVo, so it's not an unreasonable compromise IMHO. Of course, as the product matures, we'll cut out many peripherals, and put it in a smaller case, certainly there will be cost savings, but some not immaterial tradeoffs. It wouldn't surprise me if we continued to sell this unit along side it. I suspect many would continue to prefer it. Best guess is that the savings will be on the order of $50 for some of the customization above. Important no doubt, but not everyone would want those tradeoffs, particularly at a stage where we're specifically targeting hackers.