Video on the go, part 2

Neuros Audio has always had one big problem: their products, feature-laden as they are, appeal more to geeks than to the average consumer.

Call me crazy (and many people do), but the $149 MPEG4 Recorder 2 just might change that. While I love the PlayStation Portable -- I consider it the standard in portable media players in many ways -- it's really annoying for me to, say, copy the latest episode of Catscratch so I can watch it on the bus. Let's see: capture, resize, re-encode, transfer -- and this all assumes someone else isn't in the middle of a marathon Sudoku binge on the computer.

The PDA-sized MPEG4 Recorder 2 makes it VCR simple; connect to a video source via a composite cable, insert a Memory Stick Duo, and press record. When you're done, take the Memory Stick and put it in the PSP.

With a little more work (and sliding more into nerd territory), you can take the video and put it on your video-enabled iPod, PDA or cell phone; the recorder handles 320 x 240, 640 x 240, and 640 x 480 video. It can also create MPEG and DivX files, if that's your preferred flavor.

Even better: Neuros is opening up the recorder's hardware and software to the open-source community, just as it's doing with their 442 personal media player. It's the rare product that's friendly to both nerds and non-nerds; I'm certainly rooting for them.