[Dtb-talk] iPhone/iPad/iPod touch NLS Playback question

Sun May 16 11:09:23 UTC 2010

You have to remember that NLS is governed by the publishers. As long as their material is in a proprietary format, they can issue the materials without worrying about copyright. Braille is a proprietary format - and when they went to audio, NLS devised its own unique system first for tape, now digital. If they open it up for wider use, they will be required to get individual copyright permission for each work, or pay. Either would cripple the service. But in terms of "sharing" with more popular devices, they don't really have much choice. Remember how the publishers and then authors reacted when the Kindle 2 was released with its text to speech feature? Same issue. 
 Fr. John R. Sheehan, SJ
Chairman

Xavier Society for the Blind
154 East 23rd St
New York, NY 10010
(212) 473-7800
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________________________________
From: Lynn Evans <evans-lynn at comcast.net>
To: Discussion of Digital Talking Books <dtb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sat, May 15, 2010 2:46:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Dtb-talk] iPhone/iPad/iPod touch NLS Playback question

Just being a smart ass here:

With all the emails flying back and forth here, we haven't yet convinced NLS 
to release their proprietary format?

hmmmmm

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Flint Million" <fmillion at gmail.com>
To: "Discussion of Digital Talking Books" <dtb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2010 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Dtb-talk] iPhone/iPad/iPod touch NLS Playback question

I think another possible issue is that the iPod has an AAC/MP3 decoder
in hardware, but not an AMR-WB+ decoder. I may be completely wrong on
that since the iPhone is probably using some kind of AMR audio for the
phone component, but I have never read any specs on it. Also it'd  be
logical that the iPod touch would lack such a decoder even if one is
in the iPhone. (And it could also be that the iPhone's decoder, if
any, is part of the GSM hardware itself and not part of the media
playback chipset.) This would mean we'd be reduced to decoding the
book content in software, which would potentially reduce battery life.
One of the selling points of the iPod touch is its seriously long
playback time - they rate it at about 30 hours for music, which
matches our big tabletop NLS players - but they achieve this by doing
as much as they can in hardware using specialized very-low-power
chips. Anything done in software on the device eats the battery life
away, because the main processor, while efficient, can't compete with
a specialized low-power decoding chip for media content.

And of course, the issue still stands with how to get the book content
on to the device. I may be wrong, but I think Apple disapproves of
methods of loading content that involve simple drag-and-drop. All of
the apps I've seen available on the app store for content consumption
require you to either use WebDAV or FTP or a traditional web server
style upload mechanism. This adds yet another complexity to the
process. Apple's App Store policies seem to include some unwritten
rules about things like this (I'm sure some have heard the stories of
apps being rejected for no apparent reason), so this is just another
thing to worry about.

FM

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 10:03 PM, Mike Freeman <k7uij at panix.com> wrote:
> Besides, multi-use devices do each of their functions with equal 
> mediocrity!
>
> Mike
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Burke, Dan (DSS)" <burke at mso.umt.edu>
> To: "Discussion of Digital Talking Books" <dtb-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 10:35 AM
> Subject: Re: [Dtb-talk] iPhone/iPad/iPod touch NLS Playback question
>
>
>> It's logical - everybody is searching for a single multi-use device. I
>> would love to be able to use my smart phone to read Daisy and NLS.
>>
>> But htis is not a world that always makes sense, is it?
>> (grin)
>> Dan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Dan Burke
>> Assistant Director/Assistive Technology Coordinator
>>
>> Disability Services for Studentstss
>> The University of Montana
>> Emma B. Lommasson Center 154
>> Missoula, MT 59812
>>
>> 406.24.4424
>> 406.243.5330 FAX
>>
>> www.umt.edu/disability
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: dtb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:dtb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org]
>> On Behalf Of Eric SS
>> Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 4:21 AM
>> To: 'Discussion of Digital Talking Books'
>> Subject: Re: [Dtb-talk] iPhone/iPad/iPod touch NLS Playback question
>>
>> I would think anyone who currently uses one of the dedicated NLS-capable
>> devices and has an Iphone/Touch/Pad, would be very happy to be able to
>> use
>> just one device. I know a couple of folks who don't use the NLS digital
>> service because they do not want to deal with another device, but would
>> become enthusiastic users if they could listen on their Iphone, etc.
>>
>> Eric SS
>>
>>
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