Neuros Technology Forums

    I've read all the specs I could find on the web and haven't yet determined if the OSD does playback itself or requires a separate device.  Does it playback?

    What I am actually looking for is basically a VCR that doesn't use tape.  I just want to be able to record my TV shows to hard drive ( or other large storage ) and play them back.  I do realize the OSD is currently Beta/Gamma and don't mind tweaking it.  Reminds me a lot of the OpenWRT project ( http://openwrt.org ) and I really like playing with that.

    Is the OSD designed for my intended purpose?  If not, any suggestions for the "extra device" needed to play back to TV or other products that are designed for my intended purpose?
    I also don't want to have a noisy computer in my living room, don't want to pay a subscription service fee like with TiVo and strongly prefer opensource and linux based products.


Thanks,

Jason Joines
===========

Yes they all play back what they record: http://neurostechnology.com/osd/osd.asp

By "all" I mean every digital video recorder I've ever seen.

    That's good to know.  I had read the page at the URL you provided and just looked at it again.  I don't see anything about playback other than under the "With the Neuros OSD and almost any handheld" section.  The "and almost any handheld" part is what made me wonder if the Neuros OSD just provides recording and you have to have something else like a handheld for playback.


Jason
===========

These two points under that section are indicative:

• Play movies downloaded from the internet on your TV.
• Hold a slide show of your latest road trip on your TV.

Basically it is also a media player.  Connect it to a TV with the A/V cable and you can play any supported file format (image, audio, video).  And of course it supports its own recording format for playback.  That's what I mean by "they all will play back what they record".

I have the Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder 2 by the way.  It functions similarly.

    My Gamma unit came in.  Id does play back without any extra device despite the wording of the OSD website causing me to question that.

    However, I should've payed more attention to what it can record from "cable box" not "cable".  It has no tuner and thus can't really record anything without an "extra" device.  In my case I'll have to keep the VCR I was hoping to replace with the OSD.

    The main page at http://neurostechnology.com states "Record Live TV and Movies from any video source".  I was shocked it didn't have a tuner and given that absence the previous statement is quite misleading.

A "video source" means line-level audio/video to me (yellow/white/red RCA).

You would have had an indication that it included a Tuner if it had RF input.  No RF input means it can't possibly include a Tuner capability since there is no way to get the cable signal to the unit.

    Anyone know of any small, inexpensive cable tuners?

I guess by small you don't mean VCR-sized or I'd say you already have one.

But if you will be transferring any VHS tapes to the OSD then you will still need the VCR.

    Yep, smaller than that.  Preferably as small as the OSD or smaller.

    I'm not going to be doing anything with tapes.  I'm using the VCR tuner right now for testing the OSD ( it's still useless as of the latest firmware as it can't access any storage media reliably, can't record as a result, can't play, etc. ).  However, it's on it's not so healthy and I wouldn't be surprised if it ceases to function at any time.

Fortunately the tuner part of a VCR tends to outlast the tape transport mechanism, which is what I suspect is dying on yours.