I am registered blind in the UK and have bought a Slim Devices squeezebox 3 (with Slim Services) on the front from eBay. Very good product. I did research on these products and found the Squeezebox was the best for my requirements. I wanted to connect it to my Hi-Fi.
I chose not to get the Boom because I wanted to connect the device to the Hi-Fi and having speakers built in wasn't necessary and was too expensive. The Duet was out because the remote I felt was difficult (very hard to read - no magnification available). I tried to see the remote in action but was unable to do so. I saw the Sonos remote in action but it was impossible to read so that was out. There is an Internet Radio from the Blind available from the British Wireless For The Blind Fund in the in the UK but they wanted £27 or so I think par year for the privilege of Internet Radio that I wasn't prepared to pay. (To be fair they were offering Talking Newspapers and RNIB's streaming Talking Book Service (although you have to pay for that separately)). I do have some sight so can read the display of the Squeezebox and the large fonts are marvellous. Even the smaller fonts are readable up close. The viewing angles are good, and the remote control is good. Having a Duet controller that could talk to you or one that could be magnified would be useful. You could then control Squeezeboxes, Booms and receivers. The idea of buying a mobile phone and Talks software just to control a music player whose remote control is unusable doesn't appeal. I have just replaced my 10 year old inaccessible mobile phone with a Motorola F3 Fone that is excellent. It doesn't have wi-fi internet capabilities but it was less than £20. I have found it immensely difficult to get accessible mobile phones in UK. The shops no nothing and don't take responsibility! Audio feedback as to where you are in menus seems a good idea at first. But I wonder how useful it would be in practice (I use print not Braille). The problem is that nearly all the menu options are either your music collection or internet radio stations. The way Rock Box solves this is to have Voice Files for fixed menus and .talk files that go into your Music Library and are played every time you select a menu item. As you scroll down the menus the .talk files are read out to you. Rockbox is open source firmeware for MP3 players. I have an iAUDIO X5 which is great with Rockbox! The comment about Harmony remote controls was interesting. Checking on Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0012RHQN4/400001208-21/?m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE I find it is a touch screen remote! Again small type on the screen and poor contrast. The rest of the remote looked OK, but because of the touch screen and the small type it would be useless for a totally blind person and very difficult/ next to useless for someone who has severe sight loss. I worry about how long the Boom will be in production given the emphesis on the Duet. What are the supplies of VFD's like? Note although you can control these players using a laptop, I didn't go down that route since I wanted a stand allone music streamer not a fully fledged laptop. To have to buy a laptop just to access a Reciever because I couldn't use the Duet controler rather defeated the purpose. Finally the Squeexebox 3 is an excellent product - the only affordable accessible Internet Radio/Music Streamer on the market. The Boom replaces it in this category. However the Boom has it's own speakers. For someone like me who has a Hi-Fi already this is a bit disappointing. You have to get it online new where you can or go second hand. (Although Second Hand is cheaper). The idea that the SqueezeBox 3 could disappear to be replaced only with the Boom or unusable Duet; or Very Expensive Transporter doesn't appeal. One final general suggestion would be to make the players Squeezeboxes/Duets/Receivers/Transporters use DNS names. This would allow people to use DCHP servers properly without having to re-configure things each time the player had it's address changed. The player name at the moment is used by the server and is not part of the DNS system. My firewall has my 2nd PC's DNS name programmed in, but my Squeezebox IP address. Again the Squeezebox is a very good player. And again a talking/magnified Duet would be VERY useful. Being able to use the database in the Music Library in SqueezeCenter is very good. In Rockbox when you use the Database this items are spelled out to you. Although there is no speech in SqueezeBox being able to read the menus in large print on the display and navigate in Albums rather than through the Artist/Albums Directories that I have in my Library is very welcome! -- Declan Moriarty ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Declan Moriarty's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=23670 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=63422
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