Victor Reader Stream New Generation

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Price: $359.00 $344.00   

Product Feature

• Play books music DAISY iTunes MP3 4 WAV etc
• Access Bookshare NFB NEWSLINE for books magazines newspapers
• English text to speech integrated WiFi for wireless content
• Supports up to 32GB SD cards USB flash drives
• Recharge via computer USB or USB AC adapter

Product Description

Imagine having the latest novels, magazines, your favorite music, audio-described films, texts and even your own voice recordings - all in the palm of your hand! NOW WITH UPGRADED VERSION 4.2 SOFTWARE! Recent software updates to the popular new generation Victor Reader Stream portable digital talking book players make accessing more books, newspapers, magazines and classroom materials simpler than ever. With software version 4.2, Victor Reader Stream users now have access to media sources like the National Federation of the Blind and Bookshare, as well as support for Microsoft Windows Media. NFB-NEWSLINE, a service of the National Federation of the Blind, offers 327 national and local newspapers and 40 magazines to its more than 100,000 users. Stream owners can enter their account information directly on the Stream and begin receiving their favorite newspapers and magazines wirelessly without a PC or telephone. Stream automatically synchronizes with NFB-NEWSLINE and maintains the same issues of publications that are found on the server, which usually includes today's edition, yesterday's edition and the previous Sunday edition for newspapers and the latest 2 editions for magazines. Bookshare has more than 200,000 books available for its 260,000 members, and the Stream will now be able to search the entire Bookshare online library, provide wireless book downloads, and automatically unpack and decrypt downloads using the member's account credentials. Version ...

Victor Reader Stream New Generation Review

Disclosue: I do not own this product. However, I own a gen 1 Stream and a Victor
Reader Stratus (desktop version of Stream). While this product is slightly better
than the gen 1, I don't feel a need to buy the gen 2 as gen 2 isn't a major improvement.

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Breaking News: Sept. 20, 2013

The Library of Congress' Digital Talking Book player app for iOS
has been released. Search the iTunes store for "BARD Mobile".
It is a free download. A free Android app is in also in the works.

Both apps play the NLS BARD audiobooks.

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Gen 2 differences from gen 1 include: USB charging, Acapela voices (same as on Stratus,
better than atrocious Nuance voices in gen 1, but Ivona, now owned by Amazon.com, has far
better voices than Acapela), WiFi wireless capability (also found in Plextor PlexTalk PTP-1),
SoftPak (which is a $50 extra cost optional firmware upgrade to gen 1 that adds mp3
recording; ability to read aloud or text-to-speech unprotected EPUB and DOCX files,
and other capabilities), improved and louder speaker, compatibility with more audio
and document files, can record from line in, smaller, lighter, faster USB transfer.

If you don't already own a gen 1, and can't wait for the iOS app (see later in this review),
buy the gen 2, it is an improved product.

However, if you already own a gen 1, get the gen 2 only if the improvements in gen 2 offer
something compelling to you. For me, the gen 2 is nice, but it didn't have the compelling
features I list later in this review.

If you have an iPad, iPhone, iPod, and can wait up to a year (possibly more), you might
be able to get many of the gen 2's capabilities on your existing device for the
cost of apps. One complaint among the disabled has been the high cost of adaptive
technology, and the Stream is one example. The Library of Congress (LoC) has heard these
complaints from the state librarians.

For me, the gen 2 lacked the following:

- Ivona voices (now owned by Amazon.com), which to me so far, are the best sounding voices
avilable. I haven't heard voices that Nuance uses in devices installed in cars, these may
be beter than Ivona. You can buy Ivona voices for Windows PC text-to-speech (TTS) software like
NextUp's TextAloud. Ivona voices are preloaded on the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, and are free
beta apps on the Google Play Android app store. If you listen to both Acapela and Ivona
voices, the Acapela voices have an aftersound (similar to aftertaste in food) that
Ivona voices don't.

- much longer battery life. Both gen 1 and gen 2 last 15 hours. In an age where tablets
and smartphones seem to improve battery life significantly with each generation, there's been
no improvement in gen 2. Given that the primary use of the Sream is playing back the Library
of Congress (LoC) digital talking books (DTBs), which can be 10, 13, 15, 17 hours or more,
it would seem that improved battery life is a no-brainer.

The LoC is also going to release an app,a DTB player for iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod) devices.
These devices are very popular among the visually impaired, are very accessible,
are very versatile due to the hundreds of thousands of apps available, and can have much
longer battery life, especially when using inexpensive 3rd party add-on batteries.
As a matter of fact, I would consider using iOS devices instead of the Stream,
when LoC releases its DTB player app. Actually, the gen 1 wasn't obnoxiously
large or heavy, so the same size could have been kept to accomodate a bigger battery.

- use of SDXC digital media cards. Both gen 1 and gen 2 use SDHC cards, with a maximum
of 32 GB. While 32 GB might sound like a lot (and it is, given that DTBs are typically
highly compressed, using efficient codecs, low bit rates, do not require high fidelity,
and might actually be monophonic and not stereo, technology advances enable tablets and
smartphones to increasingly support higher capacity SDXC cards (64 GB and higher). In fact,
Seagate recently announced a 500 GB hard disk designed specifically for tablets. Moreover,
solid state drives (SSDs) and other storage media used in tablets/smartphones is coming
down in price, paralleling the drop in price of SDHCs, and tablets/smartphones are likely
to increase their built-in storage in the future. Android devices typically have external
storge in the form of microSDHC, up to 32 GB, or even microSDXC, up to 64 or 128 GB, card
slots.

Put another way, think of the Stream as a 32 GB media player. Some people actually
have mp3 collections larger than 32 GB. Yes, you can stick a USB flash drive onto
the gen 2, but I don't think people walk around with USB flash drives hanging off
their devices. For one thing, it's an open invitation to a broken device USB connector,
personal injury, or other disaster .

- music shuffle function.

- no USB 3.0 support. Both gen 1 and gen 2 support USB 2.0, although gen 2 claims faster
transfers. I remove the SDHC card from the Stream and put it on my PC's card reader, where
transfers are plenty fast. USB 3.0 is typically 4 times faster than USB 2.0, and would
have let me keep the SDXC (if the gen 2 supported it) card in the Stream.

Given the LoC's release of a player app for iOS (and maybe even Android, one can only hope)
devices in the next few months (a work-in-progress demo was given running on an iDevice
around July 2013), the Stream will be facing formidable competitors in the coming years.
While the Stream is not likely to go away (totally blind people will still find it useful,
and only the Stream can be navigated by tactile feedback), the Stream's low vision customers
might defect to more versatile tablets and smartphones, which many of them already have.

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