Released almost seven months ago, the Neuros LINK has continued its evolution to bring the comprehensiveness of the Internet's video to a consumer electronics like form (meaning it operates easily with a remote control, etc).  The Release of v1.3 of the LINK's software, codenamed "Hancock" marks an important milestone in that evolution.

Hancock is important because its the most comprehensive Internet video navigation available with a remote control.  We finally got to a point where the amount of content you could navigate with a remote was sufficient that we felt comfortable promoting that as the initial boot interface.  Of course, no content has been removed, everything the LINK was ever able to access is still there.  The only difference is that the device now starts up with a beautiful new front end that suits a piece of "electronics" rather than a PC.  Naturally, there are still plenty of times that a free form mouse interface is handy, so the remote is RF and has a trackball.   Most users will still have a need for a keyboard at least occasionally, but what the new interface does is allow the device to be usable by many more people in many more casual situations.  Basically, the remote gives you access to a pretty rich set of content and features, and the keyboard gives you even more including the ability to configure the box to your heart's content.

Hancock is largely the product of the mass of 3rd parties working on this, The front end is XBMC with a modified Mediastream skin. In future releases, you'll see Boxee and Miro pre-installed (they both work well with the box today).

Does this signal the end of the browser centric approach? Not at all. We believe web technologies are a central part of the internet-tv-to-the-tv answer, the “TV browser” will be different from the PC's browser in major ways. The search will be different, the browsing will be different, the interaction with sites will be different. It will be a hybrid of technologies that integrate browsing from a number of different sources. It's no coincidence that both Boxee and Miro have integrated a web browser into their applications. Thankfully, all these projects use compatible open source licenses, which form the foundation for a host of experimentation which will ultimately lead to a rich, more integrated experience.

What's next for Neuros LINK software?

1. Better integration of the Neuros.TV dbase into the XBMC/Boxee Browser;
2. Making the browser portion of the software more TV friendly for non optimized sites. We've taken some steps in this regard, but more needs to be done, particularly when it comes to “5 position” navigation. The Android browser handles this pretty well: jumping between links, and automatic scrolling, with a fast, reliable zoom (avoiding multi-touch since you can't, well, touch at all); and
3. XBMC/Boxee Integration. It's redundant to have two applications on the box when they share so much functionality and code. Either the Boxee plugins should make it to XBMC or some mods are needed to Boxee to boot there.

NOTE:The LINK's Gamma period is running out, but you can still buy as Gamma as we work ourselves out of a (hopefully) temporary backorder period.