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Talking TV arrives in Australia
Transcript
12 May 2013
Roberta: With us today is Chris Mikul, Project Manager of Media Access Australia and Chris is going to talk to us about a new range of talking TVs that have just been released by Panasonic. Welcome, Chris.
Chris: Hello Roberta.
Roberta: Tell me about these talking TVs.
Chris: Okay, now this is a pretty exciting development I think. Panasonic have just released a new range of TVs which are part of their Viera series of smart TVs, and that’s spelt V-i-e-r-a, and they’ve got a function on them called Voice Guidance. This is a text to speech function which was originally developed by Panasonic in the UK in conjunction with the Royal National Institute of Blind People and the TVs with it were first released over there and now they’re available here.
Roberta: So what information does the talking function read out?
Chris: Okay, it basically speaks all of the important menu information which is in the TV itself, so the set-up information, and it also gives you all of the information that come to you as part of the TV broadcast. So it will tell you what channel you’re on. If you change channels it’ll tell you what channel you’ve changed to. It’ll give you the name of the program you’re currently on, it will give you the background information, the description of the program that you get, when the program started and that sort of thing, and it will also read out the electronic program guide.
So basically you can scroll through that and it will speak out the names of all of the upcoming programs and so on. So, it’s pretty good. It won’t speak absolutely everything on the TV menus but it does the important stuff and they’re working to change that but, at the moment, if you get to a spot where it doesn’t speak the stuff, it will actually tell you that, “Oh I’m not working here”. So it’s a pretty good system.
Roberta: Now, if people want these TVs, how should they get them?
Chris: You can order them through the Panasonic Website and also a lot of electronic stores stock Panasonic TVs. Now, I would warn people that probably if you just walk into a store and speak to a salesperson and say, “I want a Panasonic TV with Voice Guidance.” they’re probably not going to know what you’re talking about unfortunately.
So you probably have to do a bit of explaining and I would just say before you buy any set, get them to actually look at the specifications of the set and make sure that it does have the Voice Guidance. But I believe it’s, if not all, it’s most of the TVs in the 2013 Viera range.
Roberta: So, big question, how much do they cost?
Chris: Well, unfortunately they’re not the cheapest TVs on the market. Now the cheapest one is the VT60 50 inch model and the recommended retail price for that is $1,150 . There’s about 15 models altogether and the prices go up after that. So the most expensive one is three and half, or $3,600. So obviously that’s going to be outside the price range of most people, although that’s the recommended price so you might get it a bit cheaper in some outlets. I suppose the good thing, though, is anything to do with technology, it’s always, anything new is really expensive and then the prices ...
Roberta: Then it comes down.
Chris: ... they come down fairly quickly. So I think…the text to speech functionality is being found on more and more bits of equipment and in different places and it’s just becoming more and more used, and I think eventually it will become a standard thing on normal TVs, within probably a few years. So it’s a start.
Roberta: It is a start and everything has to start.
Chris: That’s right.
Roberta: Now finally, what’s happening with audio description?
Chris: Oh it’s the eternal question, isn’t it? We still haven’t got word from the government that they’re going to give the ABC a bit of money to do it. What we’re asking for at the moment is, the trial that went on, finished last year, in November, what we want is a continuation of the trial. So we’re not demanding a full service yet but we think in the lead-up to getting that, if they continue the trial, that would be extremely useful.
So we and Vision Australia and Blind Citizens Australia and ACCAN have a bit of a campaign going to get people to write to Mark Scott of the ABC and Senator Conroy just to keep this essential service going or to bring it to us finally.
Roberta: Now, if you want to know more about the talking TVs, Media Access Australia has a website, mediaaccess.org.au and to get involved in the campaign to keep audio description going on the ABC, visit the campaign website or you can give Media Access Australia a call, I love this number, 02 9212 6242. Thank you for all of that Chris.
Chris: Thanks Roberta.
Roberta: I’ve been speaking with Chris Mikul, Project Manager of Media Access Australia and Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.