Comments on: UK’s First Inbuilt Text-To-Speech TVs Hit The Shelves

By: Panasonic

Panasonic — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:02:21 +0000

In response to Luca, as this is our first implementation of tet to speech we have no plans to provide this years products with any additional languages. The problem with additional languages is the memory constraints to store the voice library. We are considering what to improve for next year’s models, I will raise the issue of range of languages with the developers.
May be I can ask a question to you, in relation to your question are you looking for just one language, (the right language for you), or multiple languages?
In relation to models you will find this functionality on various screeen sizes from 32inch up to 65 inch where the end of the model number end in VT50B or GT50B, or ST50B, or UT50B,or XT50B, or WT50B,or DT50B, or ET50B,or, ET5B, or E5B.

By: Panasonic

Panasonic — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:54:40 +0000

In response to Nigel Timberell, we can totally understand your comments and to a small extent frustration, unfortunately with new emerging technologies it is not so simple to adapt existing TV’s to accomodate the needs of the new technology.

By: Panasonic

Panasonic — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:51:00 +0000

In response to Shane Hogan, the TV will only respond to the programme guide of the TV’s direct tuner input (Freeview,Freesat, Saorview) guides depending upon the model you have purchased and reception mode you are using. The Speech function cannot operate to the information of external devices such as Sky boxes or receivers connected by SCART or HDMI

By: Luca

Luca — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 07:30:26 +0000

great news! i wonder if text to speech will be available for other languages than English and whenn… and would be useful to know the exact tv models with tts eenabled… any hint?

By: Nigel Timbrell

Nigel Timbrell — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 09:39:39 +0000

Given time it will be interesting to see if the text to speech will be available for existing TV sets at a reasonable cost.

By: Nigel Timbrell

Nigel Timbrell — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 09:34:05 +0000

As a totally blind gentleman although not seen it it can be only a step in the right direction from Panasonic inputting in text to speech software into their TV sets. My concern would be how many people who need this facility are going to go out and purchase a brand-new TV set? It would be interesting to see if Panasonic can fit a component into existing TV sets to enable text-to-speech in our own TV sets instead of going out to purchase a new one.
An argument I have had just like the talking free view box from the RNIB no doubt these will only be available to those people who have not switched over and not to existing ones.
It seems discrimination to those disabled people who had no choice to make do what was available at that time but not allowed to have what is available today under the similar system.

By: Shane Hogan

Shane Hogan — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:02:47 +0000

I wonder if the talking TV will work with every programme guide, regardless of who the TV network is? Will it work with Sky, UPC, Freeview/Saorview etc?