Text to Speech in the Living Room
by Terry Borst"Insufficient data."
Those words, and the speech synthesis technology behind them, signaled perhaps the greatest advance of the Spaceship Enterprise's onboard computer. Look past the chilliness of the phrasing: the digital device was talking. Not displaying its output through a printout, on a display monitor, or an LCD panel -- but talking.
Of course, it's been a lot of TV years since the Enterprise flew its maiden voyages. And we've all heard talking computers since then -- but the voice has always sounded machine-like, and the applications stayed on the gimmicky side.
Now, as the computer invades the home entertainment space, under the hood of digital sound systems, audio-visual (A/V) networks, smart TVs and settop boxes, it's reasonable to ask whether there is a place for speech synthesis in the living room.
The answer is decidedly yes, though the reality still falls somewhat short of the full promise of text-to-speech (TTS) applications.
This article will survey how TTS can serve your needs, and some of the products that already use the technology.
What's That Song, Mr. DJ?
One of the most obvious uses for TTS in the living room would be to have your own virtual DJ, either back-announcing or previewing a set of music tracks.CD3O's media hub, the c300, wirelessly transports MP3, WMA and WAV audio files from your PC to your stereo system. A key feature of the CD3O hub is CD-DJ, a synthesized voice that will happily read out as much of the metadata (song, artist and recording information, lyrics, etc.) attached to the music file as you'd like to hear.
You can cue CD-DJ on demand via the remote control (so if you can't remember who an artist is, you can get an immediate reminder), or set CD-DJ to automatically intro programmed sets of music (with the bonus that you won't ever hear a commercial or public radio pledge spot).
Mike and Cristal
CD-DJ is understandable, but nobody would describe its DJ voice as soothing or lilting.Speech synthesis technology continues to improve, however — and digitized voices virtually indistinguishable from human voices are now possible.
AT&T has introduced Natural Voices™, which you can sample for free (on your PC) at http://naturalvoices.att.com. Blindfolded, could you tell that Cristal and Mike are synthetic, rather than real? Maybe ... but maybe not. It's that close.
AT&T Natural Voices™ offers a TTS "engine" that can be plugged into almost any software or digital application.
And AT&T's Mike and Cristal make a difference when it comes to other TTS applications...
Read Me My Email While I Watch The Notre Dame Game
A company called NextUp (http://www.nextup.com) markets TextAloud, a downloadable software program that converts any textual material (a webpage, a Word document, an email, an e-book) to an MP3 file.This opens the door to a wide variety of uses. Say, for example, that you're taking an online class and need to get this week's online lecture, which is normally a series of webpages that you read.
With TextAloud, you could easily capture the lecture text, convert it to an MP3, move the file to the living room through your A/V network or media hub (see the Winter/Spring 2003 issue of Smart TV Sound for a thorough discussion of these), and listen to the lecture while you're playing with your child, folding the laundry, or watering the plants.
Or take inexpensive e-books. TextAloud can turn these into MP3 audio-books, perfect for travel with an iPod or other portable MP3 player.
How often do you encounter a lengthy article online that you decide isn't worth reading at the moment? With TextAloud, you could capture the entire article, MP3 it, then have it read to you from your stereo system.
Think about Tivo's Home Media option (which allows you to network the settop box with a PC or Mac, and access digital media files). Used in tandem with TextAloud, your Tivo could store and manage dozens of TTS MP3s. Imagine your Tivo reading exercise instructions, movie reviews, online newspaper articles, and even actors' parts from a school play.
'The Wire' Comes On In 5 Minutes
Because A/V networks and media hubs allow you to trigger digital media on a timer, you could record personal voice reminders to go off during the day. At 4pm, Julie's reminded to do her homework. At 7pm, the family's reminded to take the dog for a walk. And at 9:55pm, you and your spouse are reminded that a favorite HBO show will be starting in a few minutes.NextUp also distributes WeatherAloud, StocksAloud and NewsAloud for the PC. As their names imply, these programs aggregrate textual data, in order to verbalize the customized information you've requested (for example, today's closing prices on your stocks, or weather forecasts for the different cities your grandparents, your uncle, and your brother live). As of now, these other NextUp programs do not have an export-to-MP3 feature -- but that is likely to change.
TextAloud isn't the only program in its category. Shareware text-to-MP3 programs do exist, and you can find them easily through a Google search. But the commercial polish and ease-of-use TextAloud offers may well justify its modest cost.
The Future
Expect some variation of CD3O's CD-DJ to become a standard feature of home A/V networks.And while TextAloud does make it possible to have nearly any textual information read to us in our living room, it admittedly takes a couple of steps to get there.
In the very near future, however, we should see TTS integrated thoroughly into every audio and video device we use. Audio reminders, and readings of customized Electronic Program Guides, are likely to become standard features of Tivo-like devices. Digital media servers should provide audio instructions for set-up and use on demand. Your home network could read a customized round-up of real-time football scores at the half-hour. Your daughter's school essay could be read to you while you open and discard junk mail.
The voice we hear, of course, could be our own. But a little imagination suggests it could also be SpongeBob's or Johnny Depp's or Queen Latifah's.
For the sight-impaired, the full-scale adoption of inexpensive TTS in the living room is long overdue. For the rest of us, TTS is going to be both useful and fun -- and something that will soon seem indispensable, just as Captain Kirk couldn't have imagined a silent computer...