It's an encouraging development. Someone should take charge of this
development here in India, too.
----- Original Message -----
From: "pradeep banakar" <pradeepsocialw...@gmail.com>
To: <accessindia@accessindia.org.in>
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2010 7:52 PM
Subject: [AI] Talking TV?!
World's first talking TV now a reality
June 8th, 2010 - 13:36 UTC
by Andy Sennitt.
TVs that can talk to their owners are now a reality thanks to British
high-tech company, Ocean Blue Software. Expected in UK stores by the end
of the summer, the company's low cost text-to-speech technology, dubbed
"t...@tv", is being built into set top boxes from Korean company, Arion
Technology, which will be branded and distributed by major retailers in
the UK from August.
The new set top boxes are like regular Freeview or satellite boxes, but
will be able to talk to their blind or partially-sighted owners -
advising, via speech technology, the TV programming schedule, for example
what's on and when. Owners will be able to adjust the speed and verbosity
of the voice to suit their needs, choose to enlarge or reduce font sizes
and change background and text colours. A re-designed and easy to use
remote control will also be included.
The technology has been developed in partnership with digital TV chip
giant, STMicroelectronics, whose processors lie at the heart of most TVs
and set top boxes. Phase two of the development will introduce voice
activation technology to allow owners to talk back to their TV sets -
"channel up", "channel down", "volume up".
"The digital switchover has multiplied the number of channels to 40 plus,
for UK consumers, making navigation very difficult for the visually
impaired," said Ken Helps, CEO of Ocean Blue Software. "This technology is
a step forward to making digital TV accessible to all sectors of the
community".
Ocean Blue's t...@tv will be available in different languages and
dialects; the UK version supports both the Scottish Gaelic and Welsh
language for example. The technology behind t...@tv is a derivative of the
pioneering work and development between the Royal National Institute for
the Blind (RNIB) and Ocean Blue over the last three years. The development
won an IABM Award for Excellence in Design and Innovation, was nominated
for a Royal Television Society award and shortlisted for an IMS TV
Innovation award in the USA.
The Arion Talking set top box will be available in a number of UK
retailers.
(Source: Ocean Blue Software/Arion Technology)
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