Digital Future TextSpeech Pro for Pocket PC Text-to-Speech Capabilities

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.digitalfuturesoft.com/texttospeechproductsforpocketpc.php' target='_blank'>http://www.digitalfuturesoft.com/te...forpocketpc.php</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Digital Future specializes in developing human voice computer synthesis software (text-to-speech software) for Desktop and Mobile computers (currently Pocket PC). Providing exceptional voice quality for mobile devices through our partners from NeoSpeech (a VoiceWare subsidiary), we are able to a provide the most powerful text-to-speech software for Pocket PC on the market."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/ekkie_textspeech_200608.gif" /><br /><br />With relatively few exceptions, Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology is something that has been lacking from Pocket PC software libraries and it's not something that is discussed all too often. Digital Future apparently specializes in this area and one of our own community members, Marcel Proust, has brought to our attention their Pocket PC release which he was very impressed by. Unfortunately, trial download is not available and the asking price is a healthy $49.99 USD (you can find it <a href="http://www.handango.com/ampp/store/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=192601&productType=2">here</a> in our company store though you'll want to go <a href="http://www.digitalfuturesoft.com/texttospeechproductsforpocketpccheckout.php">here</a> if you're interested in getting the female voice bundled instead of the male voice). So if you have any questions, I'm going to happily volunteer Marcel to answer them all. ;)

[palur]

I have been eagerly waiting for a good TTS software. I want to know if this can read from any document such as PDf isilo and repligo formats. if it does and then I would be willing to try this to read my journal articles. :D

[Marcel_Proust]

"Digital Future specializes in developing human voice computer synthesis software (text-to-speech software) for Desktop and Mobile computers (currently Pocket PC). Providing exceptional voice quality for mobile devices through our partners from NeoSpeech (a VoiceWare subsidiary), we are able to a provide the most powerful text-to-speech software for Pocket PC on the market."

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/ekkie_textspeech_200608.gif

With relatively few exceptions, Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology is something that has been lacking from Pocket PC software libraries and it's not something that is discussed all too often. Digital Future apparently specializes in this area and one of our own community members, Marcel Proust, has brought to our attention their Pocket PC release which he was very impressed by. Unfortunately, trial download is not available and the asking price is a healthy $49.99 USD (you can find it here (http://www.handango.com/ampp/store/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=192601&productType=2) in our company store though you'll want to go here (http://www.digitalfuturesoft.com/texttospeechproductsforpocketpccheckout.php) if you're interested in getting the female voice bundled instead of the male voice). So if you have any questions, I'm going to happily volunteer Marcel to answer them all. ;)

Allways happy to spread the news about a program I like. No trial for a 50$ program! It looks that way at Handango, but it seems a trial is available at PocketGear, the place where PocketPcThoughts Subscribers get a healthy discount.
The program suppports a number but not all file formats. For some, one has to cut and paste. Hopefully, as it evolves it'll become more automated for more formats. It also has an actual built in web browser, that I don't think is based on IE. It's not very good, so I prefer cut and pasting for web pages.
It's the first tts program for the Pocket PC that is actually usable for exten ded listening imho. Doesn't compare to Audible.com of course, but still very useful for those of us who like to multitask.

[Marcel_Proust]

I have been eagerly waiting for a good TTS software. I want to know if this can read from any document such as PDf isilo and repligo formats. if it does and then I would be willing to try this to read my journal articles. :D
I'm actually away from my pocket pc today (!!!!) so I can't check for you, but I think the trial should say. I'm pretty sure no for repligo or isilo, you would have to cut and paste for those. I'm not sure how practical that is for isilo as I don't know if the text scrolls and if you can copy a more than a page at a time?
The most impressive part of the program for me is the quality of the tts. The quality has only been available on the desktop before.

[jickbahtech]

if you have to cut and paste why not just use Flite?
Or is the voice a lot better?

[alese]

I wasn't able to find out what files this thing support, is it only Pocket Word and HTML from it's browser?

One would hope it can read also some other files, like E-book (.PDB, .LIT, Repligo, .PDF) and possibly from within some programs (Mail?).

[PDANEWBIE]

Can you add this to a PPC with voice commander and have it function on its own? :lol:

[Marcel_Proust]

if you have to cut and paste why not just use Flite?
Or is the voice a lot better?

yes. much much better. i don't find it possible to listen to long documents using flite. really any documents.
while i would agree that more and more natively supported file formats would be nice, and hopefully will if version 1.0 is developed, i am not sure it would be be fair to expect it to support propriety file formats like repligo. for now i've been listening to those by converting them to word format or cutting and pasting. if the developers listeninmg to this, i think the lack of automated inbox support is a serious shortcoming though.

[Zagleft1]

Yes, there is a demo version at pocketgear (limited to only reading the first 150 characters of a document, which isn't much). And its only a paltry 30MB download... 8O

The voice is remarkably good, but $50?? Jeez. :cry:

Additional info: For anyone who has been waiting to buy software, www.PocketGear.com is having a summer sale. The site is offering 20% off everything. The sale ends 8/17/06. At checkout, use the code SUMMERTIME to get the discount. At least that would cut the cost to $40.

[Marcel_Proust]

Yes, there is a demo version at pocketgear (limited to only reading the first 150 characters of a document, which isn't much). And its only a paltry 30MB download... 8O

The voice is remarkably good, but $50?? Jeez. :cry:

Additional info: For anyone who has been waiting to buy software, www.PocketGear.com is having a summer sale. The site is offering 20% off everything. The sale ends 8/17/06. At checkout, use the code SUMMERTIME to get the discount. At least that would cut the cost to $40.

thanks for the heads up re discount!
while i agree it's on the pricey side i don't think they are ovrpricing it. my understanding is that just licensing the good voices like NaturalVoices is a hefty proposition. These programs tend to be fairly pricey on desktops if they are bundled with the speech engine.
in any case, they have no competitors as of yet. if someone would combine a speech commander with this that would be nice.

[thierryb]

Marcel Proust
Do you know when the French will be supported on the Ppc ?
And what could be the price for reading french and english?
I would appreciate if he could read directly in Neffront, Pdf, Word.

[jlp]

...
in any case, they have no competitors as of yet. if someone would combine a speech commander with this that would be nice.

While searching on PocketGear using keyword "tts" I found SmartRead (http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=21198) and Sakrament Teller (http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=20115). They go for $35 and $30 respectively.

None have a trial version though, not on PG at least.

Maybe some writer here should make a round up test of the 3. I'm sure these companies would be willing to "donate" one licence for testing/comparing.

[lady_morana]

I bought this program and I hate it.

It will not recognize about 1/2 of the files I have, even the RTF ones, none of my HTML. I have to convert everything over to TXT.

When I load a large TXT file into it, it only loads a portion of the file. Like there is a word limit even though I have the paid FULL version.

I have tried writing the company but have received no reply.

I love audio books. I love my PPC. But if this is the quality of programs available, I give up.