Category: accessible Devices
if so, please tell me more about it. how much does it cost?. is it an advantage to use etc.
reason i ask....i was talking to someone earlier and they suggested to me as a useful product
Daniel,
I like it quite a bit. I can play MP3's on it. But I like listening to the audio books and text files on it as well. I hade a text address booka dn can use it to read that. It costs $329 US and you need to buy a memory card forit, so that will increase it a bit.
Thom
Daniel
Go to humanware.com and download the two files they have with all sorts of info about the victor stream. I also noticed someone has made a podcast about it on blindcooltech, though I did not listen to see if it's any good. Man, some people are really shitty at podcasting because they don't even have their thoughts organized before they start talking. But I digress...
tom, is the product easy to use?. what say is the average size of it. :).
becky, thanks. i will check that website out
I borrowed one from a friend just to see if I liked it. I really think it's a worthwhile investment. It's fairly simple to use, it has a lot of great features: Mp3 player, book-reader, voice recorder, and it can also play audio-described movies. The thing I really found nie about it was the fact that when you want to download files onto it, you just plug it in to your computer, and it acts as a drive. No additional software is needed to do this. The thing I do not like about it is that it doesn't tell you the time or date. If you are attending school, and need something to read your textbooks, record class lectures or study notes, play music and watch movies, this is the machine for you. Good luck.
I think it's awesome! I've only had mine for a few weeks, but my bookport crashed right in the middle of a summer class. My VR stream was 299, but I've seen it at 289. Of course, that is without the cards. Buy those from amazon. Get SDHC cards. It is very easy to use. I had to play with it a bit, but after just a few hours, I got it. It isn't a problem. Good luck
The Humanware price is $350, I think. Something like that. Of course, I don't know if this is whitout the SD card or not. It can play .brf, .wma, and RFB&D files now, I think. Actually, I think the VR's price may be $330 ish. lol sorry I'm not being more accurate.
HumanWare's price is $329, and I believe that does not include an SD card. I have been doing my own research, and I found another site that sells them as well. The site is ICanSeeMyPC.com. They sell the Stream with the SD cards included. They have one Stream that doesn't come with a card, and it's for $314. The other prices are as follows:
Victor Reader Stream with FREE 2GB SD Card, $329.00
Victor Reader Stream with 4GB SD Card, $339.00
Victor Reader Stream with 8GB SD Card, $359.00
They also sell the batteries and adapters for the Stream. I've never used this site before, so I don't know how the service is or anything like that, so if anyone knows, I'd be interested to hear about it. The prices are very good, since they include the SD cards. They also offer free ground shipping in the US.
In case anyone's interested, here's the link to the site I was talking about in my last post.
http://www.icanseemypc.com/vist.html
thanks leanne, very helpful. :). so...can anyone tell me how it works exactly?. i mean, what are the cards for, you put what you want on the cards and use it like that?. i don't get it
Hi I like the victor stream. I need to replace mine. I do not know why but it just stopped working one day and I do not think the worenty for it is any good. I think it is worth every dime. I did sign up for the digital life stile think that serotek was doing so we will see what happens. I just do not have the money to replace it rite now.
Seriously Dan, if you go to the humanware site, you can read and download the FAQ section as well as another informational file to have these basic questions answered.
The VR stream needs the cards for memory sake. It has No internal memory. Look, no document or even a person can really explain somethings. Some things have to be played with, or at least, that has been my experience. If you get one, I will be more than happy to help you. OK, let's see. The stream has a number pad like a phone. above that are two buttons, the left on has a mark on it, that is used to go to either heading with in a book, or a time hour/min/ with in a book. Under the key pad you have a button below the zero that sets the sleep timer. under that you have three buttons. Rewind, then play, then fast foward. On the very top of the stream, you have a USB connector on the left, a SDHC card slot in the middle, and the batter charge chord connector on the right. On the left side going down the left side I should say, you have the power button. Under that, you have the volume up button, underneath that, you have the volume down button. On the right, you have two jacks, the first one on top is the headphone jack. The one right below it is the Mic jack. There you have a layout of the player.
Daniel: wasn't it you in another topic who said that people should do research on this? LOL. Anyway, I bought mine from icanseemypc.com which I guess is a company called Blinksoft? Anyway, I had to reformat the sdhc card that came with the unit and didn't know that was the problem. I attempted to reformat the card in my Stream, but that didn't work. I then reformated it via my laptop, and all is working well. I bought the Stream for $360 with the 8gb SDHC card. I contacted the company Tuesday morning via email, and got a return call 24 hours afterword. I had fixed the problem, but at least they did get back to me. I don't know if this is the case no matter where you order the Stream from, but I'm happy to report there were none of those dreaded blister packages that everyone that I know hates with a passion. The only disadvantage I noticed is that the Stream continues to attempt to process the buttons being pressed while the unit is locked. So if you slide the Stream in your pocket and bump a few buttons at once, it will freeze the Stream regardless if it is locked or not. The only fix for that is to wait a few minutes and restart the machine. Other than that, I'm happy with it. It's certainly the most bang you'll get for your buck in terms of features. I wish the speech was a bit clearer, but it's understandable at least.
Thanks for posting the info about icanseemypc.com. That's the site that I was looking at, and trying to decide if I wanted to buy from them or not. I had never heard of them before, so I wasn't sure how their services were.
Has anyone else noticed that when playing back audio files, that the stream's times in terms of track length and time elapsed are wildly inaccurate? I'm finding that right now with an audio book I'm listening to in mp3 format. The actual times listed for the files are very far off from what the Stream says they are.
If you are talking about audible books, they are the ones who are inaccurate. For example, I put a book from their site onto my bookport. Audible said that the file is 8 hours and fifty six minutes long. However, with the bookport and Victor reader, it was 8 hours and forty nine minutes. Even in my library, the time said eight hours and forty nine minute. Audible likes to exaggerate length.
The cards hold your books and music. If you have the Stream on a table in front of you, so the number pad is up, (as if you're holding atelephone in your hand), ... yeah, never mind, just look it up on the humanware site.
www.humanware.com
Agreed. The one goes through bookshelves, three deletes, 4 and six go foward or backward between sections. Five tells you what heading you are on, seven is a menue. Pound is the enter key and star is cancel. There are many more functions, but you can reaad about those.
One thing that I'm finding I don't like about the NLS talking books is that in the magazines, they don't announce what heading the articles are on. Unless I'm missing something here, which is entirely possible, you can only skip article to article. The NLS readers always make reference to page numbers, which is nice, but wtf is the point if you can't actually jump to the page they specify? I'm new to daisy content, so perhaps there is something I'm missing here, and if there is, can someone clue me in as to the navigation elements I can't seem to find?
Oh, and here is a very useful site for anyone wanting to know more about the stream. I think it does a better job with presenting material than humanware does. Check it out Here
Hmmm, maybe there is something about that under the FAQ at humanware's website. I agree. I think humanware's manual is a bit complicated. On the victor reader, you should be able to jump to headings instead of articles. The square button above the one say "go to heading," and " go to time," I don't get why they can't use that guy's voice to read text files. That would be nice.
Thanks for the link to accessible-devices, Scott. It looks like a great site.
The reason why the guy reading the prompts is so clear is because it is not a synthesized voice. Rather, it is some dudereading the promts to make it sound more natural. I very rarely look at the HW manual, the above mentioned site seems to have all of the answers I have as it is. I doubt at this point NLS would consider marking up the niso content with page numbers in magazines,but I suggested it anyway. Unless that song My personal Jesus by Depege Mode is 31 minutes long, my streme is also inaccurately giving me times for songs. I think the song is actually about 5 minutes long?
Wow! How odd!
The number five button gives the correct information. The number zero will say the time for the entire folder. For example, I have five ACDC albums on my Victor Reader, and the thing says the time elapsed is one hour and twenty-five minutes. This is because from the beginning of the first ACDC album to the exact spot where I am right now, which is about album two track five.
Actually, the number 5 is where I'm getting the information from. It's also off in terms of folder contents. I loaded a book on to the stream that was 10 hours and 59 minutes, and the Stream seems to think it's over 21 hours long. So it sounds like a bug that I'll report to hw Canada. I have to email them anyway about the DB Communicator beta testing stuff I'm doing.
Hmm, mine doesn't do that. That's odd. I'm sorry. Good luck.
I got my VictorReader Stream last week. I like listening to my books and music on it. I love it!
Mine's gone back to Humanware for repairs. can't wait to have it back and working
What happened that required you to send it back?
Every time I tried recharging the battery, it got way too hot within ten minutes. I thought the battery just needed replacing, but that didn't do anything at all. So, it's being fixed.
For anyone who gets the magazine The Braille Forum, there is a nice description and some tips on how to use the Stream in the August edition.
Didn't Humanware just come out with a new version of the Stream? Maybe I'm wrong...
Not a new version, but an update. Just like Microsoft with updates of Windows and adaptive companies with updates of JAWS and Window Eyes, I'm sure the Stream will be updated constantly.
Oh, ok. I see.
I have a question. Is there a faster way to navigate through books? I know you can use the four and six keys, but that jumps too much. I know you can use the rewind and fastfoward, but that is too slow. I know you can go to either heading or time, but what if you don't know the heading or time? Am I missing something here? If so, please enlighten me.
Last night Accessible World Tech Talk Training hosted a Webinar about the Stream. It was a conference for people who use the Stream to come in and share tips, tricks, suggestions, etc. Gerry Chevalier, HumanWare Victor Reader product manager, was there, as well as a couple of other people who work for HumanWare, including a lady from tech support. If any of you didn't make it to the Webinar last night, they have it in their archives at:
accessibleworld.org
You may find some ideas in there.
The said podcast is now in the archives on accessibleworld.org. I just downloaded it.
If you don't have the sd card in place you can access the users guide by holding down the bookshelf or 1 key. Also if your computer has a sd card reader in it it's great. The victor reader manual is availible in audio to by going to humanware.com and clicking on support and then victor reader stream and documents and tootorials. Victor is my best frined lol.
The Stream is awesome and well worth the money. I bought mine through Activeforever.com which had the Stream for $289. If you bought more than 1 Stream, the price dropped to $275 and shipping was free. I got with a couple of friends and we ordered 3 together to get the better deal. I don't know if they're still offering this deal, but it's worth a look. I got mine in late June.
For those of you with navigation questions, here's a little help. If you press 8 while in a book or magazine, you will toggle through all the available navigation options. So, if you want to move by page, different heading levels or whatever you can do so. Basically, the 8 key defines how the 4 and 6 keys will operate. One of the options with the 8 key is time jump. From the options menu (7 key) you can set the time jump to the desire length (1 minute, 5 minutes, etc(. The adjustable time jump feature is useful for files that don't have headings. The available navigation options depend on how the file was created. The NLS digital books generally have lots of headings and are easy to navigate. I've found navigation with bookshare books to be hit and miss. They rarely have headings but you can always move by page or time. It just takes a little practice.
The Stream is slightly larger than a standard deck of cards. It is a bit taller than a deck of cards and maybe a little wider too. It's very easy to use. The synthesized speech that is used for reading files is a little more muddy than the speech on the bookport but it is understandable. The speech in the menus is very clear.
Hope that helps.
I got my Stream back a couple of weeks ago. it's one thing I never leave home without.
I hope that they build a little internal memory for numbers and I would like to be able to creat my own folders instead of what they create. Overall its a neat product especially with an 8 gig card.
Why not just the folders they provide? What more could you put on there? It's just a way of organizing your books and such. Also, with internal media, higher price. I'd rather be able to buy an eight or sixteen gig card, and just have at it.