CG reader Shaila was kind enough to send in some early impressions and info about the Neuros LINK box that we reported a couple of weeks ago. Keeping in mind that Neuros is currently in a gamma testing phase and is offering a generous four-month, no questions asked return policy on the $300 pre-production units, it seems that the system currently consists of little more than a small form factor PC running Ubuntu off of a USB drive and using Firefox for the interface, according to Shaila.
In fact, it seems as though anyone can use the Neuros.TV interface with any computer to watch web videos. It’s all at http://app.neuros.tv/videos – I signed up for an account and was using the interface in under a minute. Other functions like playing local files and whatnot would be separate from the web video stuff, though.
One thing I noticed when navigating the web video interface at http://app.neuros.tv/videos was that videos basically opened within their normal web pages – not full screen. It appears that some of the video sites don’t support Linux yet, either. That’ll definitely need to be worked out eventually.
All in all, yes, it’s still a work in progress but Shaila decided to return her Neuros LINK box already. I think that the actual UI looks pretty nice but the hardware and the hand-off between the UI and the actual videos seem to need a fair amount of polish before everything goes live for real. It’ll be interesting to see how much the project improves between now and then.
Here are some more photos:
Thanks much for sending this in, Shaila.
This is Joe from Neuros. First off, thanks very much to Shaila for trying out the device. Obviously, it’s always disappointing to get a return, but we appreciate that she tried the box.
I wanted to comment a bit about the state of the box and our vision for it in the hopes of clarifying for future purchasers. As mentioned previously, the LINK is a new type of device, which, we hope, will provide the best of both worlds: bringing the openness of the PC with the low cost, noise and east of use of electronics. To that end, we’ve chosen standard components for the design, so as to allow our users maximum flexibility. This is true both in standard hardware as well as software. Obviously, this is a more expensive approach, but in additional to the flexibility, it provides protection against obsolescence too.
While we’ll certainly continue to customize our software, we consider Ubuntu to be a great foundation that allows easy experimentation. The Ubuntu community has put a huge amount of effort into making it easy to use and customize. Likewise with the Mozilla standards browsers, there are plug-ins for many different content types and it ensures that our users will have access to all kinds of content.
The Neuros focus will be in building on top of these components to provide a more seamless experience that ties together downloaded and streamed content with a service that delivers the openess and comprehensive access to content that’s the hallmark with the ease of use “couch experience” that only electronics have historically delivered. At the same time, we’ll continue to deliver that in way that allows our most involved users to contribute to the way the device functions. We believe there’s no reason that 3rd parties won’t be as important to the TV as they were to the personal computer.
At this point, with our Gamma program we’re most looking for folks that are interested in helping contribute either with user feedback or particularly those Linux users that are interested in joining our community and experimenting with an open device for bringing internet TV to the TV.
Just registered on the neuros forums so I can start researching this thing.
I was planning to build a MythTV-based PVR but now I’m thinking of buying this. Is it worth $300 to be a gamma tester? I’m linux-savvy and surely would learn a lot poking around the neuros hardware/software but how disappointed am I going to be when the 1.0 version comes out and I’m stuck with a gamma model?
That’s exact question is the reason that we offer a four month no questions asked return policy.
I think if you research Neuros, you’ll find that we bend over backwards to try to take care of our early customers. We don’t always succeed, I can’t claim we have 100% customer satisfaction, but I think you’ll see that we try really hard at this, and really work to protect our customers from obsolescence with low cost upgrades, extended return periods, etc.