[Dtb-talk] Fwd: E-News December 2008 - Solutions Radio

[David B Andrews]

David Andrews
Chief Technology Officer
Minnesota State Services for the Blind
2200 University Ave. W., #240
St. Paul, MN  55114-1840
(651) 642-0513  Office
(612) 730-7931  Cell
(651) 649-5927  Fax


>>> Solutions Radio E-News <newsletter at solutionsradio.nl> 12/24/2008 1:35 PM >>>




Dear reader,
The festive season is upon us!
The entire Solutions Radio team would like to wish you and yours a very happy Christmas and healthy and prosperous New Year. We appreciate that for some of us the times are trying, nevertheless we believe in new beginnings, new opportunities and new challenges! And we hope you do as well. Warmest wishes!






Important breakthrough in health insurance in the Netherlands
After extensive evaluation and ensured of sufficient content, the Dutch health insurers responsible for visual aids have finally decided to include the ORIONWebbox in their product portfolio. Those with any form of reading disability can w.e.f. January 1, 2009 count on their health insurance to reimburse them for the purchase of an ORIONWebbox. This is indeed a breakthrough, as this means that the first DAISY on-line player in the Netherlands can now be rolled out in large quantities. The ORION is an on-line DAISY player that is cross-medial, because it offers real time content such as radio stations, information channels and podcasts, as well as spoken books, newspapers and magazines, but also spoken sub-titling of TV channels broadcast in a foreign language. What really impressed the insurers was that it was so easy to operate. They could visualise many homebound elderly people benefiting from this aid and diminishing their dependence on others to read to them. A truly cost effective tool to bring down costs in aid to caregivers.  


In-store music available with back-up
A few thousand In-Store webboxes are now operational in Europe and the USA, daily playing out in-store music in various stores. The music and advertisements are streamed from a central server with a scheduler via the Internet. There are a number of reasons for a stream to drop-out temporarily. (network failure, network overload etc). However, the internal buffer memory in the webbox normally ensures that this is intercepted. But if the interruption is a little longer then a deafening silence is heard. This is unacceptable. The built-in SD card with pre-recorded music then takes over. In the meantime the webbox will continue to try to re-connect to the original stream. In this way shoppers will hardly notice the breakdown in sound. 

TifloInnova in Madrid 
Every three years CIDAT, the technical arm of ONCE, organises a show for the visually impaired. The word "Tiflo" has its roots in an old Greek word meaning blind. In a truly wonderful set-up, as the lay-out of the stands was easily accessible by thousands of people with a visual impairment that visited the show, approximately 40 companies had the opportunity to show their wares. It was Solutions Radio saving grace that all the documents were translated into Spanish and the CD handout as well as the spoken interface on the ORIONWebbox was in Spanish. This truly made an impact as many upon hearing the spoken interface recognised the possibilities of this device. The spoken program guide announced in Spanish a selection of Internet radio stations, spoken books, spoken magazines, interesting podcasts and even the manual. The easy one-button operation as well as the immediate accessibility to this kind of information and entertainment caused many a listener to cry out "grande, grande" after a spectacular demonstration. We were even told that this was the most interesting and truly new application during the show. The visitors who operated the ORION all agreed that it was indeed extremely simple to use. 

ChurchWebRadio ever on the increase

At the time of Solutions Radio entering the Internet Radio market the most important application was the homebound listener, who could listen to their local church service. Five years down the line we can still say that daily new churches are subscribing to this service for their elderly homebound parishioners. In the case of church services the plain old telephone line suffices both in Europe and the USA. Connection is easy and even those in the remotest locations can benefit, as in this case a broadband connection is not a pre-requisite. In the small country of Holland alone in the meantime more than 1100 churches offer this service to their homebound parishioners. More than 14.000 listeners using this service can now simultaneously listen to their local church service via the ChurchWebRadio every Sunday! All services are also archived and can be accessed easily at a later time if you are unable to listen at the time of the actual service taking place. 

Netherlands has scoop! Spoken subtitling of Dutch TV channels 
The Netherlands is the first country in the world where nearly all TV channels can also be followed by the visually impaired without having a special TV or set-top-box for this purpose. On all ten TV channels subtitling of foreign programmes can now be received in spoken form on the channels of the national broadcasters, SBS Broadcasting and RTL Netherlands This is done using a special assistive device called the ORIONWebbox, which converts subtitles into the spoken word.

In the Netherlands alone more than 600.000 people have a problem in reading television subtitling as the result of a sight disability. Thanks to this initiative they can once again follow their favourite TV programmes To deploy this advanced technical solution the ten Dutch TV stations worked in close co-operation with Solutions Radio BV, the company that developed the ORIONWebbox. The ORIONWebbox is easy to use and needs to be connected to Internet for it to work. A PC is not required! A bonus is that one can even navigate through the spoken TV guide by pressing a single push button either on the unit itself or on the enclosed remote control. Besides the TV guide it is also possible to listen to talking books, talking magazines, Internet radio, talking newspapers and a scala of podcasts such as the latest news. 





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