Neuros Technology Forums

Replace the hard drive.  That is exactly what mine was doing after my dog knocked it off the table and on to a tile floor.  Any 2.5" Laptop hard drive will work. I put in a 100gb and it works good as new.

Glad I could help. I was hoping to inject some spark in this forum.

Well. With the inoperable hard drive, I was able to still play files from the SD card slot. So that tells me that the "OS" resides in ROM somewhere...

I did nothing to the drive prior to installation.  Took it out of the box, opened the static envelope it was sealed in and installed it.  When I put everything back together and turned on the Neuros for the first time, it had a window "format drive?  Yes No"  I selected yes and in about 5 minutes, I was looking at the standard startup menu.

Also, to test my theory that it was just a standard laptop drive with nothing special, I took a laptop hard drive that I had in an external enclosure and put it in the 442.  The 442 started up as normal and was able to see all the files and folders, did not do anything special.. I did notice that it created a couple of *.m3u files and when I used the PVR and Voice functions, it created those directories, but otherwise did not put any other files on the HD.

So to make a long story short, I think that everything that the 442 needs to operate is contained in ROM and the HD is just storage, nothing else fancy.  

Oh, in case anyone else cares, the format of the drive is vfat.

It is a standard Laptop 2.5 inch drive.  The drive that comes with the 442 is a Seagate Momentus OEM drive at 4800 rpm.  I got a new Seagate Momentus, 100gb 5400 rpm drive.  the power specs were identical, so I was not worried about battery life.  This drive has less vibration than the original, so that's a bonus.

Last night I copied about 30gb of TV to it from my MythTV box and charged it.  I am sitting here at work and it is just running through videos, so far I am at 3 hours and only have lost one block on the battery meter.  Good enough for me. My longest airplane flight is 5 hours, so this is plenty for me.

Was it rocket science? No.  4 screws on the outside, 2 small ribbon cables ad the front comes off (needs a little prying, there are tabs on the top black piece that hold to the metal sides.  4 screws and another ribbon cable holdng the main board down.  4 screws holding the HD holder down to the back of the case...  Pop out the old, put the new one in, put everything back together.  The 442 even formatted the drive for me!!  I thought that was cool.  I had about 95gb of formatted space available.  Pretty straight forward and easy for someone comfortable opening small devices.

Can't complain.

Here's a link to the drive I bought:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006FS268/sr=8-1/qid=1154096486/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5368700-3229731?ie=UTF8

Link to some guy who opened his 442:
http://devices.natetrue.com/442dissection/

Not sure if you could use a notebook drive adapter to a full size drive or not??  I don't have any adapters, and really no reason to, so I will leave that up to someone else to figure out.[][]

Glad I did it... I can live with the quirks of this device. I wanted something simple that would play and record standard video files, and this does that very well. [][]

So far so good. Put in fresh 100gb 5400 rpm seagate monentus drive (same brand and model as the one that was in it, except larger and faster).

On first boot, it asked if I wanted to format the drive, I sayd yes, and within about 3 minutes, I had 95gb of useable space.  Sweet!!!

I copied a few pictures and was able to view them, but my video collection is on my PC at home, so tonight I will load it up and let you all know the result.  As of now, it's working great!!

Well, I figured I had nothing to loose.  Neuros wanted me to send the unit back for them to look at then decide if they would fix it under warranty.  So, I opened her up and threw in a spare 20gb laptop drive that I had.  Worked right away.  Took a little longer to boot up the first time, but runs like a charm.  Just ordered a 100gb drive. I'll let you know how it goes.

Ex-Navy, were you ever able to put a new hard drive in yours..  I was watching it on my TV tonight and my dog knocked it off the table, now the hard drive makes an aweful noise.. I am pretty sure it's done for..  I was one of the few who actually liked and could live with it's flaws.. I would hate to have to go buy something else now.

Thanks.

Anyone have or seen one of these?

http://www.tekkeon.com/site/products-mypowerall.php

It is a power pack that can supply anywhere from 3 to 14 volts.  I'm thinking that if I end up getting a camera for my 442, this may solve the problem with trying to record while on battery power.

Does anyone know what the bitrates are for the various quality levels of the PVR function??

QVGA
V Quality
    High
    Med
    Low
A Quality
    High
    Med
    Low

I am not as interested in the info for HVGA but if someone wants to fill in the blanks, great:

HVGA
V Quality
    High
    Med
    Low
A Quality
    High
    Med
    Low

Thanks

It will, umm might be more difficult recoring schedules, etc.  I believe you can get a Satellite card instead of the standard Cable card.

Sorry guys, been away for a while...  Sure, I can do an IRC chat sometime...  When is best??

MythTV is kinda like Tivo.  You build a pc with regular parts (obviously the faster the better) and this "knoppmyth" acts as an operating system (kinda like Windows Media Center). IT has a bunch of functionality.  I use the "web" features most.  

I have this unit with no keyboard, mouse or monitor, sitting in my office, connected to the cable tv.  I program it from a webpage to record whatever I want on TV.  It can also stream live tv, stream recorded programs, etc.  What I do mostly, is I have about 20 programs on TV that I record each week.  The system keeps tabs on everything I record.  Even if I have already watched a show and deleted it, it will not record a re-run.  Once a show is recorded, I have a script that automatically converts that recording into a Neuros friendly file (the original program is recorded as 720x480 and is about 2.2gb per hour) and dumps it into a directory, that I can then download it from the web, or connect my Neuros to that box, issue a command and copy everything over.

I also use this same box to keep my music collection and have a different program that acts as a streaming server, so wherever I have an internet connection in the world, I have access to "good" music and TV.  

Why???  Well, I travel A LOT.  And have found that hotels have crappy TV selections sometimes, even high end several hundred $$ per night hotels.  This setup is a life saver...  How cool is it to be out to dinner and be able to set your "vcr" with your blackberry or cell phone when you realize there is something you wanted to see...  Very cool!!!

Check out this website for info:
http://mysettopbox.tv

MythTV!!!
I needed to setup a server at home anyway, so I installed knoppmyth from mysettopbox.tv.  Have been playing with it for 3 months or so and it is awesome.

It has a web interface, and you can stream live tv or recorded tv.  But the best is that once a tv show is done recording, I have a script that automatically makes a "Neuros" copy for me.  So everyday, I just connect my Neuros to my server run a command and copy all the new stuff...

This is a real lifesaver for me since I live on the road, and TV choices are not always great depending on the hotel...

I emailed customer support and they were helpful... There is new firmware coming soon []

Add me to that list...  Pictures and Video were the prime reason for purchase.  Please fix this soon!!!!