From: TG <twshop1_at_rcn.com>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:27:37 -0400

Hello all:
  I used Rockbox for many years on an iRiver 300H after going legally
blind. It made the difference between having a accessible and usable
mp3 player and not being able to listen to music I wanted. First
thanks to all who made that possible.

Recently the National Library Services (NLS) Talking Book Library has
gone digital. For those who do not know that is a free service to
the blind that supplies audio books in a specialized format to the
blind. Before going digital this was done with specialized 4 track
tape players.

The NLS supplies a free digital player the size of a tape deck, which
is intended to primarily just play the NLS books. However, there are
several manufactures of comercial devices that are more robost and
multi functional. It would be awsum if Rockbock would take the
challenge of putting their firmware onto one of these devices. I
don't know if it is feasible since it might require access to several
different protection schemes.

The players can generally play mp3 files for music and podcasts (and
most other audio formats). They play Audible books, then there are
3 major book supliers for the blind.
   1) NLS Talking books which are protected and a player most be
loaded with a key supplied by NLS
2) Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D), again they use a
protection system that requires a one time key obtained from RFB&D
3) Bookshare which delivers books closer to what the sighted would
uses on a e-reader but it is read using Text-To-Speech (TTS). They
use a simpler password that must be entered when files are
transferred to the player.
Note that these devices have built in TTS

Two devices are: (note these devices are similar to a standard MP3
player in form factor). One major difference is they do not have a
display. Instead they have the typical mp3 controls like the iRiver
or Archos had, but they also have a phone style keypad used to select
and menus that are read using TTS.

The Vvictor Stream
http://www.humanware.com/en-usa/home

Another is the Booksscence from HIMS sold by GWMicro in the US
http://www.gwmicro.com/

Thanks
Tom

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Received on 2010-08-20