Special "Nuon" Features, Say WHAT? (1 Viewer)

[Brett DiMichele]

On the Buckaroo Bonzai DVD there is a special "Nuon" feature
that it says is only supported by Nuon DVD Players. My question
is this... What the heck is a Nuon!?!

 

[John Stone]

Nuon was a technology looking for an audience. Few will argue with the fact that it was a failure.
Aside from Buckaroo Banzai, I think Bedazzled (2000) and Planet of the Apes (2001) are the only other Nuon-enhanced DVD titles out there.

 

[Charles J P]

Aside from Buckaroo Banzai, I think Bedazzled (2000) and Planet of the Apes (2001) are the only other Nuon-enhanced DVD titles out there.

Yeah, and speaking from my brother's experiance, they dont even work. He has a Toshiba SD-2300 nuon equipped player and after several calls and emails to Toshiba, has yet to get the Nuon features to work on the POTA disk.

 

[ozric_smith]

There is a link error on the POTA get a fixed version. I have a Samsung n501, it's much better then the Tosh, IMHO. Nuon Tech works just fine. I even have downloaded, burned and run free games and other stuff.

 

[Brian Johnson]

I too bought the Samsung N501. I bought into the hype that this thing had a promising future. However, the future of Nuon is doesnt look good. There have been maybe 10 games released with no promise of any others. Like others have said, the nuon feature has made it too three movies.
However... I havent said I dont recommend this player.
It has other features that other players in the sub $200 range others cant compete with. The virtual light machine that plays on the tv with audio discs is awesome(some may compare it too a winamp plug-in) It has a lot of other bells & whistles too. A powerful zoom,great fast/rewind controls,multi-angle,etc. Also, I have had no problems playing any DVD I throw in it. Maybe a couple skips from rentals but they were minor.
The thing that gets me with this player is that from the box you needed to upgrade the firmware. It has a major problem with audio sync. My girlfriend said it was like watching a kung-fu movie. And samsung never offered a free upgrade. You had to have a CD burner & an internet connection if you wanted to upgrade the player. I personally sent out 3 discs to people wanting to upgrade but couldnt. I guess I should work at Samsung C.S.
To sum up, for my first dvd player I like it. I'm sure there are better quality players but this one suits my needs for now. Would I recommend someone buy one? Well, sure I'll sell you mine (just kidding)

 

[Chris PC]

OK, but what the heck is NUON? Why can't I use the feature on my PC? Surely my PC can emulate whatever the heck Nuon is doing? What is Nuon? Interactivity? A game?

 

[Charles J P]

Nuon is a technology that allows for more interactive and more sophiticated extras that the processing power of a regular dvd player wouldnt allow. The reason it failed is that studios were reluctant to include more special features that would only be available to a select few. Hell, people alrady bitch about DVD rom content.

 

[Marshall W. Carter]

Another reason it failed is that the company behind it, VM Labs, just plain ran out of money. The technology ended up being bought by Genesis Microchip, and while it will be in other upcoming DVD players (like the recently released RCA DRC300N), it will only be for the added features for all DVD's, such as the 20x zoom with image filtering, Virtual Light Machine and the like, as they don't even have the NUON controller ports.
Very few games were actually released (Ballistic, a puzzler packed-in with the Samsung players, a version of The Next Tetris which was exclusive to the Toshiba model, Tempest 3000 (the single must-have IMHO), Merlin Racing (think Mario Kart), Freefall 3050AD and Iron Soldier 3 (which is rare due to the fact that it was promptly pulled from shelves due to a "bug") and they won't even work on the newest model (DRC300N; probably disabled in the BIOS).
Go to www.nuon-dome.com for more info. They have all of the homebrew/shareware titles available for download, as well as the N501 BIOS upgrade (Samsung pulled this from the site a while ago), as well as the few snippets of news still coming now and then. The N501 is a nice little player, especially for the $99.95 I paid for it new.

 

[Chris PC]

Could Nuon features be used on your PC/HTPC?