Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder Review

Neuros MPEG-4 video recorder, by neurosaudio.com

When I first heard about this gadget, I was excited by the idea of having a device that would record TV shows directly in MPEG-4 format, rather than in MPEG-2. I imagined it to be a Personal Video Recorder (PVR), like a mini-TiVo. It’s only when I received the unit that I realized that The Neuros MPEG-4 recorder is not a PVR like TiVo, but a simple digital video recorder that records at a resolution of 352×240 at 25 frames per second, without a TV guide, or programming capability.

This gizmo connects to a TV/Monitor where it displays the user interface. Besides recording and playing video, it is also capable of displaying still images and play MP3 music files. The video recording resolution is a bit low but it is decent if you intend to view the recorded movie files on a mobile device. To test it, I played a movie sample on my Treo 650. (Review continues below)

Connections

The TV/PC switch in the back of the unit toggles the flash card between recording mode and PC USB Mass Storage Mode. The flash cards will appear as regular movable drives. This unit should be recognized as a USB Mass Storage device by Windows XP. Other connections include:
• AV Out (display)
• AV In (video source to be recorded)
• 5V Power input
• USB 2.0 port

User Interface

The fairly basic user interface is controlled by the tiny remote control that comes with this recorder.

It’s not always intuitive, but after a few minutes, I was starting to record and play a movie. I think that it would need a little bit of polish though.

Recording

As I said earlier, the maximum recording resolution is 352×240 pixels (and below), which is not a whole lot, but sufficient for mobile devices such as cellphones. The video quality was better than I thought.

I tried to capture about 45 seconds of the DVD “Ice Age” and I replayed the file in Windows Media Player to do a few screenshots. As you can see, the image looks fairly good. The colors don’t exactly match the DVD, but I thought it was okay. Below are two captures from the recording, as it plays in windows media player:

Replay

To replay the animation, on my windows XP machine, I had to download a CODEC from Sharp (media player was smart enough to find which one was needed), which is always a bit annoying. I hope that codecs (decoder software) will be provided along with the drivers when the unit ships. On the Treo 650, there are two ways on viewing the recorded files:

1/ Let the PalmOne quick install convert the .asf file for you. This process will make the movie readable by the default media application. It will also reduce the file size by a factor of four. Unfortunately, the quality is also reduced, but not proportionally. I noticed that the frame rate was choppy and the image was blurrier. One thing was unacceptable: the audio did not work at all after the file conversion.

2/ Install the TCPMP (free) Player and copy the mpeg4 file “as-is” on the Treo SD card. The player will play the file with audio without a hitch. The playback was much smoother than Palm’s Media application. At this time, it’s the best way of playing the files generated by the Neuros recorder.

Pro
• Relatively simple to use
• Good design, compact.
• Dual flash format

Cons
• Low resolution, low audio quality
• No programming
• File not readable without additional codecs to install on XP

Price: $140 at neurosaudio.com