I'm not sure exactly what this device is. I vaguely understand that its a stripped-down linux PC with software pre-installed/pre-configured for the purpose of watching video content from websites. But what else can it do, and what can't it?
I own a Popcorn Hour A110 which I'm very unhappy with and would love to replace, but do not have the time nor inclination to build my own HTPC nor delve into installing linuxes and flavors of XBMC. In what ways is Neuros Link like and unlike a Popcorn Hour A110?
This is an excellent question and one that's not as easily answered as you might think. On one hand, it's easy to bark out "it can do anything! It's a PC under the hood!' And on *some level* it's true. New Years Eve, we had some friends over with a Big Karaoke Machine and sacks of discs, and I thought to myself, I'll bet the link could rip those discs and be the Karaoke machine, and sure enough with a little googling, I verified that it could be done. On the other hand, that's as far as I got because I didn't care to monkey with it at the time.
I think you are the perfect customer for the LINK actually, now whether its right for you today as a Gamma, or if you want to wait, that's something you'll have to decide. Based on the above, as a user, you sound a lot like me. I'm interested in a product that works, not a new hobby. Of course this is a part of my job, so I spend a lot more time and effort than I ordinarily would, but there are plenty of times I'm a user and I just expect the device to work.
Here's why I like the LINK over the popcorn hour and the other DMAs:
1. It plays just about everything you can download. My samsung digital still camera generates MPEG-4 videos with some funky audio codec, Mplayer plays it, even VLC on my laptop doesn't play the sound. To me, there's nothing more miserable than worrying about xcoding downloaded files, etc.
2. It can play web video (and soon should play all of it) There's more and more of this coming online and it's very handy. From Obama's weekly address to Dr Horrible's, I can watch it all on my TV, I think we're going to see video "aggregation" or
clipping/editorial type stuff coming, it's nice to have it on my tv.
3. It's basically the most future proof device you can buy. To me that's vital, I don't want to have to make a bet on Netflix v. Blockbuster v. Amazon, I don't care to have to read the tea leaves and bet on Joost v. Hulu, I just want the stuff to work. Now the truth is, at this point the LINK is behind a full fledged PC, we don't yet have Netflix or ABC.com) but even at the Gamma stage, it's the vast minority and I'm pretty convinced that we'll be at parity with a windows HTPC and hopefully within Q1, and I'm not going out on much of a limb on that prediction, it's pretty clear that's the way those providers are going.
4. It plays virtually all the other multimedia web stuff out there, from the streaming music sites to online photo's etc. No hacks, no third party software, no limited functionality where you set it up on the PC and watch or listen to what you queued up there. It just works.
5. There's a robust community around the software that goes on the box. This might sound like a silly touchy feely thing, but it's not. If you're hearing about Boxee on the blogs, etc well, so are community members and you can benefit from their efforts. The Boxee and XBMC guys have LINKs and many of our community members have gotten their software working on the LINK already. It might sound like a small thing, but it's the kind of thing that makes the difference between a device that allows you to keep up with all the changes in the market (and the pace of change on Internet TV is brisk) and a device that leaves you stuck in the mud reading about those changes from the sidelines (or back to watching stuff on your PC)
6. The LINK has "real software." I don't mean to sound condescending on this one, Neuros has a history of embedded development. The hardware is great, it's tiny, very cheap, power efficient, etc. But the simple truth is it's still limited. the LINK cpu is somewhere on the order of 10x any of the DMAs from any maker. This matters because it means you get Mplayer, you get a real web browser, you get Adobe Flash, you get XBMC. These are robust programs developed by big communities of talented developers. The integration of all these programs isn't as seamless as it will be yet , but the functionality is there, and it's functionality that no single manufacturer can compete with no matter how big their in house team is.
7. Neuros performs the service of an integrator, so you don't have to. I'm with you, as a user, I don't care to try out different flavors of Linux, or open source media players. That's Neuros' job. The Neuros team (internal and community) is trying out all these things, making them work flawlessly and pushing them out to our users, so they don't have to worry about it. The open nature of the device keeps us honest. If we don't choose the best software, our community will do it for us. I think this is one of the nicest things of having standardized hardware, we can make sure it works once and all the users will get the benefit.
Well, that turned out to be a lot more of a sales pitch than I expected, but it really hit on why we chose this architecture, why we use open source software, and all the lessons we learned from years of mistakes, so I found myself getting a bit carried away.
Can the Neuros Link stream content from my LAN - the .AVIs/.WMVs/.FLVs/.ISOs I have floating around on various SMB shares? Does it Youtube? Does it web browse? Can I install internal hard drives?
As answered above, yes to all
Will it have an interface I can manage with just a programmable remote control (Harmony 880), or is a mouse/keyboard in the living room a requirement? Will my wife be able to use it? My five year old?
xbmc and myth both have remote interfaces. We haven't officially supported this yet, but it's coming. Part of the answer depends on what you want to do. If your wife wants to watch Hulu, then the reality is that you'll probably end up with the keymote, although Boxee and others are working to embed that to make it more remote friendly. The web navigation today is pretty familiar (the browser is a modified version of firefox after all) and the front ends are pretty good (my personal preference is XBMC) they are not yet seamlessly integrated, it feels like a PC with two separate applications, but that will evolve over time.
I'm about to see if I can setup the box to see if my 6 year old can use it for browsing a handful of movies, etc, so I'm going to try to setup a simple remote, I think there's more work to be done and the reality is that there are still bugs in the device that we need to fix, and there's no easy way to constrain a user just to one area of functionality, but it's not a ridiculous experiment, put it that way.
