From BoingBoing comes news of a new Personal Video Recorder (PVR) built from the ground up as an open source device. The $299 Neuros OSD, from the well-known AV gadget makers Neuros, is being billed as “the first open source Linux-based embedded media center.”First, the basics:
With the Neuros OSD and almost any handheld, you can easily: • Watch your favorite TV show or movies anytime, anywhere.Cool, but not exactly blog-worthy. As BoingBoing tells it, here’s where things get interesting:
• Digitize your home movies.
• Play movies downloaded from the internet on your TV.
• Hold a slide show of your latest road trip on your TV.
• Capture your video game highlights and email to friends.
...they’re offering cash bounties to hackers who add various features to the device, including $1000 for a YouTube or Google video Browser, $600 for a Flickr Photo Browser, $500 for a WiFi PSP or PDA remote, $700 for a TiVo-like recording function for radio/satellite radio, and $500 for getting VoIP running on the device.Sounds like something built from a simple consumer insight: People want easy access to their stuff. All of their stuff. It gets better:
- The power adapter is standard, the kind you can replace at any Radio Shack for $5.
- The remote control codes are those of standard Sony VCR, so if you’ve got a better remote, use it.
- Even the product’s sell-sheet is a wiki, enabling users/hackers to write the story of the product as it develops.
Just as exciting as the capabilities this product intends to unlock is the fact that Neuros actually gets it. Give “the community” something to shoot for and a little encouragement – and get out of the way. There’s a place for back-tested revenue models, format wars, and cross-channel partnerships…but what ever happened to innovation?
Track the project’s real-time progress for yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment