My thoughts on the OSD; If your waiting to buy one... Wait no more!!!

[travisnj]

I just wanted to share with the community a thought and my new founded opinion..

Jumping in a bit late on the OSD-Duck bandwagon and starting with .58 and progressing to 3.28-1.00 I have officially decided and find no use for the "clutter" and equipment thanks to the great progress that has been made in this short amount of time.

If I were to have been asked what my opinion was when I first got it... I would have said the same as the editorials and posts in other forums about the "potential" however, I would still have a stack of equipment, piles of DVD's from recording and labels, printing, time and transcoding, storing, etc.... Well, you get the point... Nightmare

I also am a BIT-TORRENT person (OF VARIOUS NON-PIRATED CONTENT, I DO NOT USE PIRATED CONTENT) home video (cam), movie trailers, etc.

What does this all mean to the OSD?

Simple. I now can download and put it on my network file-share (unfortunately had to breathe life into a windows box again; OSD has bug where it only see's CIFS/SMB on Windows (http://bugzilla.neurostechnology.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1515)) and can flawlessly stream to OSD!!.... I can record on the fly (instant record) or schedule my recordings with IR Blaster and send to that windows box, finalizes in 5 seconds... Post-Edit simple in StreamClip to rid of commercials or "trim" the fat off for the movies... Store and retrieve, play, record, etc... all without touching on DVD-R, printing a label, transcoding, burning, etc....

I have 4 sets, 2 family members and two children in my home, I am going to get an OSD for our own LAN based Video On Demand system for the family... (VIDEO ON DEMAND SYSTEM WOULD BE WITH MY OWN LEGALLY COPIED COLLECTION/PURCHASED MOVIES, TV SHOWS, ETC.)

[JoeBorn]

Travisnj, bless you for this post! And thanks for your clarification on the piracy, etc. issue

As discussed, some folks are probably confused about Neuros position.  Neuros is strongly in favor of supporting user's fair use rights:  http://www.neurosaudio.com/press/freedom.asp  However, we don't support/condone piracy, and it's vitally important that we make a distinction.  We all know that any company that supports fair use/digital rights often finds itself in Hollywood's crosshairs.  So this isn't just a moral issue for us, but a very practical issue.  If we take a wink wink approach to supporting piracy, then it will certainly hurt our credibility when it comes time argue our position (and that of consumer's digital rights).  Who will believe our sincerity in support of digital rights if "everyone knows" we make our money by tacitly supporting piracy?

Thanks again for your support. I hope all of you can understand why this issue is so important to us.

[dotslashlycos]

travisnj - I totally agree with your comments about the firmware.  I've had the OSD since December and it has definitely come a long way from where it was.  The OSD is a great device, and while it isn't quite on my list of devices I'd recommend for my grandmother, its closer than its every been before. 

I really am very happy with the latest firmware and am eagerly awaiting the youtube browser and all the other "coming soon" features.  Keep up the good work guys!

[travisnj]

Just because the file names happen to be that and identical to some content in question, I do not use nor condone the use of pirated content.

I did not state that clearly enough in the post originally because it was not "my intent" to discuss piracy. The omission of source was a mistake, my source is strictly legally obtained and copied or stored copies of content, TV shows, etc. Thank you for bringing this to my attention to the possible misunderstandings that could arise from such activity.

I really do have to express my disappointment with the rest of your post however.  Its hard enough for these guys to argue for a DRM free world without people like you openly stating that you're using the OSD to play back pirated content.  The movie 300 isn't even out on DVD yet, but you didn't seem to have a problem posting a picture of your device with that and several other blatantly illegal "Downloaded Movies."  The last thing Neuros needs is images like that floating around associating the OSD with pirated content. 

If your not in the "mindset" of being a bank robber, you would not be nervous about walking into a bank. The same is true here, if your not a pirate or condoning piracy, you would not be inadvertently and mistakingly posting images that could be construed as such.

About the DRM-FREE issue, I look at the behavior no more and no less than the Quicktime player, VLAN player, Mplayer, etc. The OSD is nothing more or less than a VERY NICE stand alone box, it is no more a contributing factor to piracy than that of it's PC based siblings! PC based siblings are just as capable and blatant about playing any content that is thrown at it in whatever format, trans-coding content, recording video sources and storing video sources. On OS X, Linux, Windows there are posts EVERYWHERE on the net, this does not implicate these companies nor their counterparts in software into a conspiracy of mentoring and supporting piracy.

Neuros's image or "standing" is not going to be tarnished nor will they be accused of loosing their moral and ethical compass as a direct result of images floating around.

• All movies referenced (regardless of filenames) are only TRAILERS.

• The DVD player remark was to be obvious of using your LEGALLY obtained media, then storing this content.

• The BIT-TORRENT remark was to be obvious of using your LEGALLY obtained media from the public domain (e.g. Azureus public freely distributed media), then storing this content. 

The post was within context of what the OSD does feature wise, meaning supporting DRM-FREE.

You both are correct however simply based on a ethical level and same is true in two mistakes, accidental omission and lack of disclaiming! For that I have learned yet a new lesson today in Neuros Forum Posting Etiquette.

Thank you

PS,

I own the PLEXTOR  PX-TV402U as well, provides the same feature-set.. Just not so capable and certainly the largest drawback for me is the lack of it being 00% stand alone and requires a windows host dedicated to it. However the OSD is not the only capable device for recording/storing/retriving any content presented for a consumer.

I own a CaptiveWorks 100R that is a Stand Alone Box, like the OSD in functionality, better playback (at this time), better recording and pass-through (at this time), more features with an EPG/Scheduler (at this time) but, has no network support. Yet, this w/o network ability is for a mere $125.00USD!
- Instant recording (in mpeg4 format)
- Schedule recording with full featured Electronic Program Guide
- Play Mpeg2, Mpeg4, AVI, Divx files- Listen to MP3 and WMA files
- Opens JPG and other format pictures.



The two biggest issues that drive Neuros beyond others; it is Open Source and has native network support. Outside of these two issues there are more options to record content in hardware based MPEG4 format with better quality (at this time)  and little more features (at this time). Neuros is not the first and will certainly not be the last to enter this market with or without MPAA, RIAA, BIG BOX STORE, etc. support or approval. To allow anyone to play/record/store/edit/retrieve anything they choose, anytime they choose. So photos floating around the internet is inevitable for any device, with or without my mistake.

[JoeBorn]

Travisnj, thanks very much for the clarification, it's very much appreciated, as is your participation generally.

[sgrass]

I agree this firmware is great I am now able to watch my movies with no problems. I still run into an issue if I fast forward where the video and audio are out of sync, but not as big deal as before where I could not watch the end of the movies because after an 1 1/2 hr they would get out of sync and start skipping.

It will be great when you get your EPG working this way I can get rid of my tivo. Do you think in the future that you will have dual av inputs and support recording to programs at the same time?

As a user this is a great product and hope to do what travisnj is doing and get these on all of my televisions and use a NSLU to share the video.

Thanks for all the hard work.

Shawn

[JoeBorn]

I doubt we'll have dual AV inputs because that would require two external tuners, but probably a future model will have tuners and dual tuners could be an interesting option there.

[andrew]

I doubt we'll have dual AV inputs because that would require two external tuners, but probably a future model will have tuners and dual tuners could be an interesting option there.

You know what would probably be even easier (and mebbe kewler) is the ability to have one OSD control other OSDs.  For example, you hook up one OSD to your TV, but you hook up additional OSDs to other devices (more tuners) then, from the OSD that is hooked up to the TV, you can schedule recordings and manage the IR Blasters on the other OSDs.  Everything could record to the network, or if the OSDs had local storage, they could record to that and then share it with the "main" OSD. 

Requiring a network for that feature wouldn't be too much of a burden and you could add as many recorders as you have sources and that would r0x0r!.

I think that some ability to manage all of the OSDs on your network from any of them would be a pretty kewl feature.

[greyback]

While I'm sure Joe would be delighted to sell everyone 2 or 3 OSDs at a go, I'd say most consumers would prefer one device that does almost everything.

I agree it'd be cool to have a hive of collective OSDs, it's not something I'm gonna shout for.

Personally, being a tad of a cheapskate, I just change that which the OSD is plugged into depending on what I wanna record! Sure that's impractical if one show is on terrestrial tv, and another via my digital box, but so far it's not bothered me.
-G

[JoeBorn]

While I'm sure Joe would be delighted to sell everyone 2 or 3 OSDs at a go, I'd say most consumers would prefer one device that does almost everything.

I agree it'd be cool to have a hive of collective OSDs, it's not something I'm gonna shout for.

Personally, being a tad of a cheapskate, I just change that which the OSD is plugged into depending on what I wanna record! Sure that's impractical if one show is on terrestrial tv, and another via my digital box, but so far it's not bothered me.
-G

What if there was a lower cost solution for playback only (for playing your recordings on other TVs in the house)?

[greyback]

What if there was a lower cost solution for playback only (for playing your recordings on other TVs in the house)?

I've not used my OSD much for recording to be honest, 98% of the time it's playing back various video files I've got, DVDs I've ripped, etc. A cheapish flexible playback device would be a decent product.

Notice how many DVD players now have USB ports, and support playing mpegs & avis off burnt CDs & DVDs. I don't trust them, they hardly support all the different media formats out there, but there must be a market there. I love not having to get up to put in another disk for another movie, I just use the remote to find it & press play. It won't be long before we reminisce about physical DVDs, as all media will be downloadable.

Recording is a nice feature, but it appears playback matters more for people. I'm sure I don't need to mention that Apple product...
-G

[xqme]

As far as two or three OSD's and two audio inputs, you can do most of that with external devices.

I bought a bunch of adapters, notably a female-female rca adapter. I can use a three-source analog vcr between tv, vcr, dvd player, output all to osd, output osd to tv for monitoring.

From bhphoto or adorama, I could get an accessory for digital camcorder that would take two xlr pro mike inputs and mix their levels right there, outputting that to osd. You can do pretty much anything in the way of mixing outside of OSD. I got an impedance matching transformer and adapters for xlr mike to OSD din plug. Maybe if OSD was recording audio only, the processor could handle recording at higher than 128kbps, like 220kbps.