Vote on bugs and enhancements

[kleinbull(at)yahoo.com]

The selections that come up to post on the bugzilla site don't seem to indicate a post preference for R2 firmware.  When selecting "firmware" as the primary option, it looks like the secondary pull-down appears to be related to  Neuros Audio Player.   

My previous reply in this post is a request for the R2 firmware since I was confused about where to post on the bugzilla site.   

I think you have a strong product and thank you for your foresight to bring it to market...I hope you have a patent cause I saw there is a new gunslinger in town.    From what I've experienced so far with my R2, you should be at least .75 to 1 with PSP owners considering the functionality you are providing to PSP owners.   

I think you have a great product, but keep moving strongly forward and don't rest on your laurels.  Don't give up the fight, satisfied customers are one the the best forms of advertising you can hope for in the world. 

[JoeBorn]

You are definately right on all accounts.  Bugzilla is confusing in that regard.  Firmware refers to N1&N2 firmware.  R2 Firmware is under MPEG-4 Rec >Firmware

And we're definately not resting on our Laurels, check out http://wiki.neurostechnology.com/index.php/Neuros_OSD

[bobkart]

If you are still taking suggestions for firmware improvements for the R2, mine would echo those of several others in this Topic:

 - visual confirmation that the unit is turned on
 - a way to turn on AutoRecord permanently

Ideally as long as it has power, as soon as a video signal is present, it would start recording.
But if that's not possible, then as long as it's turned on (with visual indication that it's on!), AutoRecord should work.

This whole thing where AutoRecord is turned off after it is used makes it practically useless.  At the end of each AutoRecording I must find a TV screen, hook it up, and navigate through menus to turn Autorecord back on.  Or resort to manual recording which is what usually happens.

Thanks for listening.

[hrlaser]

Hi Joe

I wrote the 4000 word review of the Recorder 2 Plus that went up on TreoCentral yesterday. As you probably know, I had MANY phone calls with Johan while prepping to review the unit, and he was extremely patient and listened to everything I said. Give that man a raise!

I trust you've read my review by now. I mentioned some of the quirks with the unit, but I'll list them here in what I think are order of importance - if you can fix any of these things in a firmware upgrade, I'd love to see it happen.. so here we go:

(But first, let me mention that I play back files I've made with the Recorder 2 plus ON the recorder and my teevee, ON my laptop with VLC, and ON my Treos with TCPMP.. so I use all three methods of playback.. not necessarily with everything I record, but I watch the stuff I record all three ways..) ..

- The "feature" I like the least: get rid of the two hour recording limit. I mainly record commercial-free movies from premium cable channels and MANY films run over two hours. I get a20-30 second gap (whether I've started the recorder manually or via timer) when it hits the two hour mark, closes the first file and opens the second to get the rest of the movie. This seems like an artificial limit and I can't comprehend why it's there

-PAUSE during recording - let me pause during recording, same as I can pause during playback. This would be especially useful when recording shows with commercials in them and any VCR can pause during recording.

- 12 hour timers with AM/PM indicators: Make the timers 12 hours with an AM/PM indicator like every VCR I've ever seen has. And when scrolling up or down through hours or minutes when setting a timer, say Iwant to set a timer for 9:30pm, if the digits are at 00 i literally have to punch the up or down button thirty times to get to :30.Fix it so holding down the button increments or decrements the timer hour and minute counters at an increasing speed the longer one holds down the button.

- Zero out used timers: Zero out any timer after it's been used. In other words, like a VCR, if I set it to record a show from 10pm to midnight, and it records tothe tape, afterwards, that timer is gone from the VCR's timer screen. On the Neuros, the "old" timers are still set to the date and time they made a recording. This seems pointless and strange.

- Visual recording or timer on indicator: Make the red LED blink when the unit is recording, or when timers are set for future recordngs. If this drives some people nuts, then make it a toggle.

- When was this recording made? Put a timestamp on each recording so when it's played back ON the Neuros, and the white overlay is visible with the remote's display button, it shows when that recording was made: mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm instead of showing the current time, or in addition toshowing the current time

- FF/RW speed indicator: When using FF/RW mode, indicate on the overlay which speed FF or RW you're using. There SEEM to be five speeds but there's no visual indication as to which speed it's going

- Card space remaining in real time during recording: Decrement the space available on the card, in real time, on the recording screen white text overlay AS the recording is in progress. In other words, I'm looking at the overlay and it says I have "1006 MB/260 Min" left on the card. I hit record. Those numbers stay static. I'd like to see them decrement to show me how much space is left on the card AS a recording is being  made, not just AFTER a recording has been made and the file has closed.

- Renaming files: How about an On Screen Keyboard so one can rename recorded files on the card while it's in the Neuros? "MV400023.MP4" doesn't tell me much about what that file is, and I usually have to play it because the preview window shows me one frame which may or may not be enough visual information to tell what show or film it is. Let me rename the files with an OSK so, for example, instead of displaying MV400023.MP4 in the list of files on the card, it would display "Unforgiven" or "Annie Hall" or "Curb Your Enthusaism #12" or  whatever I typed into it.

- Resume and Bookmarking. If I'm watching a movie play back on the Neuros, and I leave the playback screen, and go back to it again, I have to FF back to where I was to continue watching from that point. In other words, I'd like a "resume" feature. Make the unit either remember where it was if one leaves playback mode, or allow one to put bookmarks in a file AS it's playing and then jump to them.  Like if I want to bookmark particularly memorable scenes in a film, how in the world am I supposed to remember where in a 2-3 hour movie a certain scene is only by its HH:MM:SS??..

I'll stop there. Don't get the impression I don't like the product. I gave it TreoCentral's highest rating in my review.

I just think it needs the stuff I listed above. If you could only fix ONE Of those things, the two hour time limit per file is the one that drives me batty the most. 

Regards,

Harv

[bobkart]

According to this Topic, the 2-hour limit is in the hardware (4MB RAM), unless a different file wrapper is utilized:

http://forums.neurostechnology.com/smf/index.php?topic=7398.0

Just FYI.

[hrlaser]

According to this Topic, the 2-hour limit is in the hardware (4MB RAM), unless a different file wrapper is utilized:

http://forums.neurostechnology.com/smf/index.php?topic=7398.0

Just FYI.

I guess I simply don't understand how 4mb of ram in the machine translates to a 2 hour recording limit when I've created recordings up to 800mb in size (a two hour movie in 320x240 "normal" mode = an 800mb file).. how is the amount of internal RAM directly related to the 2 hour per file recording limit? Are you saying it buffers 4mb of data at a time and then writes it to the open file and then buffers another 4mb of data? If that's what it's doing, then why should it care about the final recording time limit?  I'm not an engineer so as Denzel Washington might have said in "Philadelphia".. explain it to me like I'm a 9 year old 

Harv

[bobkart]

Here are the relevant quotes from that Topic:

Yes, I'm with you, it's incredibly annoying.  I've also asked if we could have it bumped to 2.5 hours.  The trouble is that the .mp4 format requires some kind of table thats stored in ram.  it's apparantly a big table that maxes out the 4MB of RAM on the system at 2 hours.  Apparantly it could be fixed by using another recording format, but then that wouldn't play on the PSP or iPod.  Unfortunately, those are the options we have with the R2 hardware right now.

From what I have been told, the only software fix is to use a different file wrapper (ie. avi or asf).  Let me get with the folks here to see what we can do about some kind of exchange or upgrade type program...

So I am just going by what I have read.

I agree it is a serious shortcoming.