If there’s one thing we’re lacking at the Incomplete Gamer, it’s time. Time to read, time to play, time to consume…and perhaps most importantly, time to complete ‘Incomplete Gamer’ reviews.

Of course, time’s the one thing we can’t find on Ebay, although a quick Ebay search does  turn up a BACK TO THE FUTURE Flux Capacitor Official Prop Replica for only $350.  Had you been quicker off the mark you could have hit up US seller studbold1969 who was selling a ‘how to build a flux capacitor’ guide for the bargain price of $US20 (parts not included). The item description read ‘serious buyers only’ which you’d think would rule out the vast majority of interested bidders!.

While we’ve passed up on the weird science for now, The Incomplete Gamer did stumble across an equally tempting buy on Ebay the other day and in the interests of serving our readers, and, in the interest of hopefully saving some of that all important ‘time’, we successfully bid for the said item.

The Neuros MPEG4 Video Recorder 2 won’t transport you back in time, but it does promise to save you time and into the bargain, produce a pretty decent encoding of Back to the Future for you to enjoy on your PSP, Video Ipod, Handheld or Mobile Phone.

Here at the Incomplete Gamer, the PSP is our portable video player of choice.

Now, up until recently, if we’ve wanted to get video content onto the PSP our options have been limited. If we wanted the best video quality available we could, and we did buy UMD movies and while that solution provided the best video quality currently available it did come a t a cost. UMD movies were more expensive than their DVD equivalent, yet offered less by way of features. Of course, there’s a wealth of movie trailers, clips and video blogs online, already encoded in a PSP friendly format awaiting to be downloaded and transferred to the PSP, but if we wanted to watch a movie or TV show that we legally own, we have to first rip the video to the computer, and then re-encode the video into a PSP friendly format. All of that takes time. Remember time – that all important thing we’re in short supply of here at the Incomplete Gamer. It also takes a computer that’s up to the challenge. The more powerful the beast the quicker you’ll rip and encode, but regardless it’s still a time-consuming task. Time you’re spending in front of the computer or waiting for the computer to finish encoding is time you could have spent actually watching the damn video.

What if there was a simpler way? Well Neuros says there is.

The promise: Neuros says: The Neuros MPEG4 Recorder works like a mini digital VCR and eliminates all fees, hassle and conversion of files. You can record live TV, your favourite movies and TV shows and watch them anytime…anywhere…on almost any portable device.
Put video on your PSP™, iPod™, smart phone, notebook and other portables!

Sounds good. And prospective buyers needn’t take their word for it, nor the Incomplete Gamer’s for that matter. Neuros provide a range of video samples for you do download prior to purchase.

So, does it deliver? The Neuros MPEG-4 Video Recorder 2 is, despite its decidedly unsexy moniker (there was, as the name suggests, a Neuros MPEG Video Recorder, that came before it), one sexy beast.

Un-boxing the Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder 2 reveals a device roughly no bigger than two decks of cards placed side by side, two thirds the length of the PSP and only slightly wider.

Setting up is a breeze. All you’ll need is provided in the box. Two sets of composite AV leads, one which takes the signal from your AV source – TV, Video Recorder or DVD player and plugs into the Recorder and the other which take the signal back out to the TV. All that’s left to do is plug in the power lead (the power supply is dual voltage (110 -240 watt) so you’ll simply need an adapter plug that will accept the US plug and you’re in business. (Neuros products are not available direct in Australia yet, although a few of the Neuros resellers will ship overseas. The word from Neuros is that the company hopes to find a partner to distribute their product in Australia later this year.)

  Now it has to be said that the AV leads appear a little flimsy. While you might consider rappelling down a Monster Cable, you’d be reluctant to hang a Christmas tree ornament from these suckers. Having said that, they did the trick, and didn’t suffer from any interference

Once plugged in and powered up, it’s time to navigate the OSD. Much has been written about the aesthetics of the user interface. It’s true that the OSD won’t win any beauty contests, but it’s also true that once set up, you won’t be spending much time there either. Critics have also complained that the user interface isn’t intuitive enough, but I think that says more about the world we live in and how we expect to be able to master all things without investing any time or effort, than it does about how easy this device is to use. Personally, I’ve got no complaints. I’d suggest you read the manual. It’s well written and comprehensive and you’ll be up to speed in minutes. There more support on the Neuros Audio web site including step by step guides that will walk your through the process.

The first thing you’ll want to do is upgrade the firmware. Simply download the file, transfer the file to the root directory of the memory stick duo, place it back in the Recorder 2 and hit the update firmware. Again, it’s all well documented in both the manual and online.

Once updated, I switched the Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder 2 to PAL output, and was ready to record. The first test was to record some digital TV being output in native (full screen) 16:9 widescreen. In the recording menu, having selected PSP you have two recording options, both WQVGA (368 x 208) The best option here is Normal (30 fps – 768kbps) which will allow you to record roughly 143 minutes on a one gig stick. Economy (30 fps – 384kbps) with its lower bit rate will give you 251 minutes of recording time on a 1 gig card.

Here’s where I ran into problems. Remember I’m recording from a digital TV tuner outputting a 16:9 widescreen signal to a widescreen TV which is displaying the picture perfectly. Played back on the PSP, the picture has been cropped top and bottom. Not terribly noticeable on wide shots but when the camera zooms in, all the actors are missing the tops of their heads. (download Sample video here)

Rather than mess about, I fire off a quick email to the good folks at Neuros Audio. They reply promptly and confirm my suspicion that the WQVGA mode is most suited to taping a widescreen movie. The cropping top and bottom, simply removing the black borders, rather than any of the image.

So it’s back to the Recorder 2 to test it’s DVD recording capability, again using the WQVGA Normal mode . Excellent. As expected, it handles the Back to the Future encoding perfectly on this occasion with no unnecessary cropping (download sample video here).

With DVD encoding mastered it’s back to the problem of recording my favourite TV shows to enjoy on the road.

While only two PSP encoding options are available, the Recorder 2 has a lot more tricks up its shiny black case. Remember this sucker encodes video for just about any portable video device on the market, including the ubiquitous Video Ipod.

There are four QVGA (30 fps) modes on offer – Economy, Normal, Fine and Superfine. To really see what the Neuros was capable of I chose Superfine. With a bitrate of 1536 kbps you’ll get just 77 minutes from a one gig stick,

Changing the digital set top box to a 4:3 output, and selecting the Superfine option, I achieved, not surprisingly, near perfect video encoding with none of the cropping issues encountered with the WQVGA mode. (See Sample)

There is only one problem with this method of encoding. The QVGA files are saved in a folder on your memory stick called PDA-IPOD folder. If you place the memory stick straight into the PSP your video files won’t appear in the menu. You must first put the memory stick into a pc, transfer the files from the PDA-IPOD folder and place in the correct PSP video folder – :\MP_ROOT\101MNV01.

The bad news; that work around, while resulting in beautifully encoded video, introduces an extra time consuming step into the process. A step that would be necessary if you were transferring video to an Ipod, but one that makes the whole PSP video transfer process that little bit harder.

The good news is that Neuros is aware of the problem and plan to fix it. Accordi
ng to Neuros representative Johan Abadie, “The reason why the fine and superfine quality settings are not available is due to the limitations the PSP has (I should say had now) on the maximum bit rate the PSP can playback from the memory stick slot. With our old firmware, any files encoded at a higher bit rate than 768kbp/s (normal setting), would not playback. We figured out shortly after releasing our last firmware upgrade that this limitation has been alleviated, but have not had time to change the file structure yet. I anticipate it will be done in the next few weeks.”

It’s not perfect. The absence of a WQVGA mode that can encode 16:9 TV output without cropping is its biggest failing. Having said that, the Neuros Audio’s track record of on-going improvement and firmware development give me confidence that the Recorder 2 is a product that will only get better.

The Incomplete Gamer gives this device it’s big ‘it saved me time’ rubber stamp of approval. The device records at the press of a button, and encodes in real time. Neuros customer service is prompt and efficient. No time lost there either. Video purists might not like to here such unqualified praise for a device that’s encoding a digital file from an analogue source, but personally the real time encoding results I’ve achieved with the Neuros Recorder 2 are the equivalent of any software based encoding I’ve done using a PC, including the superior H264 AVC encoding using PSP Media Manager.