Humanware has released the third generation of their
Victor Reader stream. Aaron Lindson from Lab Computers
will be joining me to tell us all
about it on this week's episode of Life
After Blindness.
Hello, and welcome to the Life After Blindness
podcast. I'm your host, Tim Schwartz. And thank
you so so much for joining me here
on today's show. Before we get to our
guest, I just want to give a quick
reminder that if you have any questions or
comments or suggestions for us here at Life
After Blindness, please send us an email. You
can send those to tim@lifeafterblindness.com.
Again, that's tim@lifeafterblindness.com.
You can also find Life After Blindness on
Twitter and Facebook, and if you go to
the Facebook page,
there you can find your way to the
Facebook group where so many people are talking
and interacting about all sorts of things related
to blindness and visual impairment
and getting their questions answered or just supporting
each other. So go check it out, take
a look, and join the community. Joining me
to talk about the new Victor Reader Stream
third generation from Humanware
is Aaron Linson, who is a products product
support specialist from Lab Computers. Aaron, welcome to
Life After Blindness.
Thanks, Sam.
Now, Aaron, I say that you're a product
support specialist, which we can get into what
that means and and what all that encompasses
here in a bit. Uh-huh. But you also
wear so many other hats. For example,
couple years ago or a few years ago,
you and I, co presented on a panel
for the ACB's national convention about smart home
technology that, you know, assistive smart home technology
for people that are blind or visually impaired,
which was so much fun, by the way.
That was that was so much, you know,
fun to do, and, we got a lot
of really great feedback from that. And and,
I really enjoyed doing that. But I know
that you do so many other things outside
of your, you know, product support, that you
do with Lab Computer. Can you give the
audience just a little bit of an idea
of what other kind of things you're involved
in? Sure. Sure. Sure. So I came from
actually a recreating background, and,
unfortunately, I was one of the,
350
contractors who were laid off in the talent
acquisition space and then found out that
Amazon itself was laying off another 18,000
corporate employees, which included
a lot of my colleagues within the town
acquisition space.
And as the markets got flooded
with
recruiters
of myself who are like minded people looking
for jobs, I thought it was a
great opportunity
to switch into something different.
And a friend of mine, actually, one of
my
colleagues
at at Lab Computers reached out to me
and said, hey. I have a position for
you. Are you interested in taking it? And
I said, sure. Let's start small and kinda
see where it goes and and,
see how everything works out. And and here
I am, talking to you today.
Very cool. And I'm so glad that you
are because you've got some, great insight to
different assistive technology products,
including the, Humanware Victor Reader Stream third generation
that we're gonna talk about today.
And, so I'm I'm really grateful that you've
been able to do this. And, you have
been testing products like this and and doing
these things for quite a long time. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. So, actually, I'm still,
I still do it with with Google,
testing
new innovations
of,
TalkBack and what's coming out there and
and some
applications
that
they,
that they have coming out, like,
the
Google Lookout application.
There's
been
implementations and improvements based on our feedback. I've
been doing that for,
gosh,
since about 02/2016,
in different capacities. And then,
and
I also do
user
interviews
with Fable
as a accessibility consultant,
as well too. So I do that on
the side,
too.
Wow. So you definitely are a busy guy.
Jeez. Okay. Yes. I'm very grateful then even
more so to to have, a little bit
of time to talk with you because you're
just, you're just all over the place. Well,
let's go ahead and just get right into
it then because as I mentioned, Humanware has
announced,
finally, after a a a long time of
hearing about it. Years. Yeah. It's been for
forever. And I think the first time we
even heard that this could be possible was
at CSUN a couple years ago. Uh-huh. The
assistive technology conference, that goes on every year.
And Right.
I know a lot of people that really
love the design and and the Uh-huh.
The independent or individual nature of the Victor
Reader Stream.
Why don't we, first of all, just in
case anybody out there doesn't know, because we're
into the third iteration of this, of course,
and so it's around for a very long
time. But maybe there are some people that
don't quite know what this device is in
general and what it does and what it's
for. So why don't you give a little
bit of an overview, first of all, of
of what the Victory Reader Stream is? Sure.
No problem. So the Victory Reader Stream is
what's called a digital
DAISY book prayer. And DAISY is a
format, an auto an audible format that allows
for basically what I like to call sighted
reading
without the sight.
You so you can
highlight bookmarks certain passages. You can bookmark specific
pages, you
can
highlight specific words, and and do all this
this stuff that a sighted person would be
able to do with say a highlighter
and a regular printed book, but we can
do the same thing with auto, audio content.
And that's basically what
it was, the first generation was, but then
it has evolved into so much more.
You can
play,
MP3s on it. You can play audible content
on it.
You can
download
text, words, PDF documents, and read that stuff
on. So it's become,
a
just a library
within your hand.
You can
download
Audible,
NLS,
and even NFB Newsline,
magazines,
publications,
and read those on the go as well.
So it's become a really
huge part of a lot of people's lives
and a huge part of my life as
well. And I never thought that, you know,
especially with
innovations like the iPhone, that
something like the victory of the stream would
be as popular as it is, and it
and it really is. And I can I
do see,
the benefit of it
because I'm also a user of these products
as well, which I think is something really
unique that I bring,
to the table here is, you know, I'm
not just a,
say, a a product support or customer support
representative
who, you know, has site? I'm a
blind person like you guys out there as
well
that I use these products on a daily
basis.
I'm not just a tester. I'm also a
client.
Exactly.
No. Absolutely. That's a that's a great way
to look at the Victor Reader stream. And
we'll do we'll talk maybe more about that
later about the the individual nature, the personal
nature of using a Victor Reader as opposed
to, say, using an iPhone or an Android
phone like you mentioned. Because I know a
lot of people, and myself included maybe in
the past on on other programs I've been
on. I I've raised that question, maybe not
completely believing the question, but just being devil's
advocate to say,
okay. But I can do all of this
on my phone. So why do I need
this? Now I know the answer to that,
and we'll talk talk about that here in
a bit. But,
but, yeah, the the Victor Reader stream for
many, many years has been able to do
many different things like you said. And and
has become really important to a lot of
people, whether they wanna use a smartphone or
not. This has become a really great device
for people. So in the first Victor Reader
stream, I mean, it was simple, although they
say simple, but it still did a lot
of things, like you mentioned with Daisy Books
and being able to play audio with m
p threes and anything. If you could download
it, you could play it because you could
put it on the SD card that that
you could pop into the to the top
of the Victor Reader stream, and and it
would you know, you could catalog everything by
folders, and and it was fantastic. I loved
having my first Victor Reader stream and and
be able to use it for for all
those different things. I would download audio for
pretty much anything I could get my hands
on and put it on that thing and
and and play it, and it was just
fantastic. And like you said, be able to
mark it with bookmarks and chapters and and
all the different things you can do. And
then they came to the second generation Victor
Reader Stream, which added
a couple of different things that the original
couldn't do. Because, for instance, anything with the
original, you had to plug it directly into
a computer. But the second had had a
few more, four few more features, didn't it?
It did. And that's where we got the
being able to sign in to,
essentially, your Barter Bookshare account,
here in The States, and,
you download directly to the device. You didn't
have to go to the computer to do
that anymore, which was,
really big for the time. And then it
also added a little bit,
on the Bluetooth side to where you could,
put in, or use, like, say, AirPods or
any other wireless
headphones or earbuds you wanted to. And then
it also added, Internet radio streaming,
as well. And then a feature update that
added the ability to download podcasts too. So
now that we've set the stage for Okay.
The Victor Reader Stream and its history and
and where the previous devices have been Sure.
Let's dive on into this third generation.
My understanding is most of the
functionality as far as buttons and and things
like that are basically the same?
Yeah.
Basically the same. You do have some different
tweaks on settings. So if you're in your
bookshelf and you press and hold the your
seven key, that will jump you into the
bookshelf settings. So you're not having to drill
down into settings.
Likewise with the serial number where you had
to press zero a bunch of times to
get to that serial number, you can just
press and hold 5,
and it will read out that information. So
it kind of will easy way to find
different shortcuts to to the different settings and
things that you would need,
quick access to. But,
overall, on a
on a dimensions level and the way it
looks, it's pretty much the same.
They've
added
they've changed the the button texture
to a more grippy texture because
myself included with the Victory to Stream second
generation,
the one that's out
as of now
when when we are recording this,
it has a plastic texture to the buttons,
to to every single button. It's really kinda
hard to distinguish
those those buttons. And with the
the textured,
more tactile feel, it's easier
to, figure out where you are on the
device.
I was reading something about that that that
it does apparently seem to be easier to
feel and and to differentiate, like you said,
between the different buttons, especially especially your,
you know, buttons, you know, one through nine
and and the zero and all that. And
I also saw where they've added some extra
tactile feel to some of the numbers on
on the button pad. So, obviously, like most
number pads, you've got a little notch on
the number five so you can orientate to
that. But then I saw something about the
two I think it's two, four, six, and
eight,
for navigational. They've they've added a little bit
more feel to those buttons.
Yeah. It's it's more textured. And I think
with the
the outgoing one,
my my, two, four, six, and eight keys,
the the,
the plastic
feeling on them to where the the bumps
have actually rubbed off because I've, you know,
those are the ones that you press a
lot when navigating a book. And so
with this new texture, that probably that is
not likely to happen
as much now. Yeah. I really like that.
I think it's a great idea to have
that texture be physically part of the button
instead of maybe, like, an overlay or a
sticker, whatever it was before where it could
wear off, like you said, with your Uh-huh.
Previous generation, picture reader. And so to have
it actually part of it, hopefully, it won't
be an issue as as to rubbing off,
and you will be able to feel that,
you know, that difference between the buttons. So
I I do really, really like that they've
thought about that and and and implemented something
like that. As far as the other buttons
and and locations of things, I know you
said they're pretty much all in the same
place. I I did see where
they've gone back to having,
different ports or separate ports for a microphone
in as well as your headphones, which I
think was it the Victor Reader Stream two
that they just went to the one jack
and and and, and then now they've split
it back to two again? Yeah. They split
it split it back to two. So your
headphones on the bottom near a, hooray, a
USB c port, so no more micro USB.
The only thing that we need to get
taken care of on the USB c port
are the iPhones. So, hopefully, you know, one
cable to read them all over here very,
very soon within September coming with Apple.
So, Apple, we're we're look we're looking at
you, and,
don't disappoint us again this year. Come on
now.
It just means that every every, person who
has an iPhone is just gonna have to
switch over to Android.
Oh, no. Now wait a minute.
But but yeah. So they've split up the
headphone and microphone jack. So that headphone jack
is on the bottom along with the speaker,
which makes,
makes the
the speaker a little bit louder and more
clear to understand,
from an audio perspective,
because you have more room for that speaker
to resonate around the entire cavity
of the Victorio Stream. And then
on the
left side, near the volume down button, they
have actually put a a microphone,
input as well. So you do have that
option to use other microphones
if you don't wanna use the built in
recording,
the built in microphone on the Victory Industry.
I really, really like that they went and
separated that again, and I like the placement
of it being in the bottom,
the way they've done. So that that makes
a lot of sense. And you mentioned the
speaker there. I did read where the speaker,
as you said, is much louder and a
better quality.
How much better do you think it is
over the the Victor Reader Stream second generation?
I mean, was it pretty significant?
I think it's gonna be pretty significant just
because with the stream the second generation stream,
I even had trouble understanding it because of
where they placed it.
And so
and I don't have, I'm not hard of
hearing at all, but I know people who
who have used the stream. It's been hard
for them to hear. So, hopefully, this
new,
speaker
and it being in the bottom will be
a little bit louder for them to to
actually hear what's going on.
Very good. I'm looking forward to that too.
That that sounds great. So as far as
software, you talked a little bit about the
makeup of the software and navigating. Is there
anything else that's different about navigation once you
get into the stream and and the software
as as well as other, maybe, services or
other things that that the new stream can
do?
Sure. So the layout and and the menus
are pretty much structured the same.
What's really neat is
you can actually now directly download
the voices
and split those
between
your reading voice and your menu voice. So
you can combine two voices, and there's a
new voice that's coming out.
I don't know what that voice is, but
it's a new American voice.
And you can split those. So you can
have one for reading and one for your
menu navigation,
which is really, really neat. And you don't
have to ever touch a computer,
to to do that. You can do that
directly from the device
itself.
You get,
actually one of the really one of the
biggest life improvement features is if you ever
had the Stream one or the or the
current Stream, you know how easy it is
to lose SD cards.
You just
I mean, it's
ridiculous. I've gone through five or already,
because they've been crushed or I've lost them
or they've been jammed in doors Uh-huh. Or
whatever whatever have you.
And
they've actually put a flap on that SD
card slot. So now you have to actually
want to get it out
in order to actually get it out. So
it's it's non it's the nonissue
now. And you don't even if if you're
not planning on putting a bunch of podcasts
or a bunch of audiobooks
or
a bunch of books on the device, you
have 16 gigabytes
of internal memory, which 13 of that is
is free,
for you to use, which is a pretty
good a pretty good amount.
But the craziest thing is
I was able to
put in in my second generation,
and it really depended on the brand, and
you kinda had to see what worked or
what didn't.
You were limited to 32 gigabytes
from what Humanware
said on the second generation, and people were
putting in anywhere from two fifty six to
five twelve and just kind of seeing what
brands worked and what didn't.
Now they've upped that to where it's so
you can put in a one terabyte SD
card
regardless of brand.
Nice. And so that's
ridiculous.
I mean, I remember
when
with the stream one, when we went from
256
megabytes
up to one gigabyte,
and we thought that was
ridiculous in itself. Yep.
One terabyte
is
it has gone way beyond that. Now depending
on how much information you put on there,
it may take a few seconds or a
few a few minutes to load all that
information.
But,
you know, to have that to basically have
an entire an entire library of of books
and information,
I'll wait those few seconds or those few
minutes to have to have just that one
SD card full of all that information and
then one storage space.
Absolutely. I really like that that they've been
able to do that. So, like you said,
the 16 gigs of, you know, on device
storage, although I I get that, you know,
bit of that's gonna be taken up with
operating system that's in there and how it
runs and all that. So you get 13
gigs of it, which by itself might be
plenty for most people. That that could be,
you know, quite a bit just to use
for for educational book, especially if you don't
keep a book on there. You you get
a book, you read it, and then you
delete it. Delete it. Yeah. You get another
one. You you can still, of course, keep
a library of books on there for 13
gigabytes. That that'd be quite a bit of
a a library by itself. But then to
be able to add an SD card with
up to up to one terabyte of space
Uh-huh. I mean, that's just that's a whole
lot of books and a whole lot of,
newspapers and and and Yes. Articles and whatever
other sort of audio media you, can get
your hands on to put on there,
I'll say. And, so, no. I think that's
that's fantastic.
And another thing that's been improved too is
the Wi Fi speed. So now we're up
to five gigahertz Wi Fi, and this doesn't
necessarily mean that books are gonna download faster.
But if you have podcasts that are an
hour, hour and a half long, some of
them that I listen to are two to
three hours.
Your connection's gonna be stable
more stable and allow you to,
not buffer as much when it comes to
that to to the download speed. And, also,
it's not gonna buffer as much as well
when it comes to the Internet radio side
of things as well. And it's gonna support
even more podcast because they've Hemaware has updated
the audio codex that a lot of podcasts
are now using, and so you'll have more
podcasts to be able to download and listen
to as well.
Yeah. Let's talk about that because,
as you mentioned, you you can access, you
know, certain podcasts and Internet radio was something,
I believe, that you could do with the
Victory Reader Stream, you know, second gen. And
and so talk to me about how you
know, what what is that, involved with with
with the Victor Reader Stream, and how does
that work?
Sure. So there's a tab that you that
you can listen to Internet radio streams in,
and it's still using OO tunes.
But Hemaware has stated that they are looking
at other providers.
My speculation,
and they're not telling anybody this,
but my speculation is they're moving to tune
in, which would be awesome because there's just
more radio stations there and more podcasts there.
And so we shall see what happens
with that.
But it will,
because they they've updated the chip, they've updated
the the RAM, and they've updated the faster
Wi Fi, your your
buffering and your streams shouldn't be
as
latency
specific
as they were with the
current second generation stream. So it should be
a lot easier, a lot stable, a lot
more faster to,
get those up get those streams up and
running.
And then as for podcasts,
how are you how are you able to
get podcasts onto the Victor Reader?
Sure. So you can, either
take in,
and produce a RSS list
and just download that onto the root street
to the root SD card of the device,
or even just on on an,
on a external SD cards, the internal or
the external memory.
Or you can also just
download those and find, I say, Life After
Blindness podcast
in the podcast category
and
actually download it and say subscribe. And and
what you will happen is when you turn
your stream on, it'll search,
for the podcast that you subscribe to and
automatically download
those podcasts for you, and then you will
have them available.
I love it. So, yeah, definitely, people go
and go and subscribe to Life After Blindness
so it'll automatically download to your stream when
you connect it. Yes. I like this idea.
This is great.
Yeah. It is.
It's an awesome podcast to listen to as
well. Oh, thanks. Appreciate that.
But no. Yeah. So no. I think that's
really a great feature to be able to
have the Internet radio, even if it is
OTOONES for now, and and, yeah, you're right.
TuneIn would be fantastic
considering the amount of things that, TuneIn
has available for people. So that would be
great. But even though oTunes for now, I
mean, that still gives you quite a bit
of Internet radio to, to stream and enjoy
on the Victor Reader stream and, and the
podcast, you know, capabilities. So there are so
many things that that this one device can
do.
We mentioned this earlier in our discussion, Aaron,
about
why would somebody
use this. And I think we've answered a
lot of this question based on just what
it can do and what's built into it.
But there still might be skeptics saying, but
I can do this on my iPhone. I
can do this on my Android.
Why do I need specialist
tech that's separate from that? Explain why you
think
this is so popular with people even if
they do have a smartphone, and especially if
they don't have a smartphone or or they're
not interested in a smartphone. I think the
reasons there are kind of obvious. But but
Right. What what makes this so popular even
for those people?
So I will say that
along with everything that we've talked about, the
the battery life on this device
is crazy.
To where the
second generation stream, you had about ten or
twelve hours of its removable battery.
Unfortunately
unfortunately, the way you look at it,
there's not a removable battery, so you will
have to take it in to get it
serviced, but you do get fifteen to sixteen
hours of continuous playback on the device.
Now, you take into consideration
everything that you're doing with your smartphone.
You're using it for texting. You might be
using it for GPS.
You might have three or four, in my
case,
three or four GPS applications open because Soundscape
is now
gone. It would be deprecated
in a few months,
and you're trying to find something different.
Or you or you might have,
Facebook or Twitter open if if Twitter still
exists,
next week. You
might have a lot of that stuff open
and also listening to a book at the
same time. So your battery is gonna decrease
really, really fast.
And then even say, you know, you may
be making multiple calls to Aira for to
help with navigation.
Whereas
with
the stream well, and also too,
With the NMS,
Bard app, there's a bug now that affects
the sleep,
functionality of that application.
And so we are at the mercy of
these mainstream developers
who, yes,
are aware of accessibility.
And in my opinion,
they use automated testing
to make sure all every single button is
completely labeled, but then they don't do manual
testing with users. And this is where bugs
come into these systems.
With the stream,
is it whether it be a second generation
or the third generation,
I know exactly what I'm getting, how to
use it, and I know that this device
is being built
and
scripted and the software is being written
by blind people for blind people, for myself.
So that I know
if I pick up a stream, if I
pick up a Stellar Tray, even if I
pick up, say, a Prodigy Connect 12, which
is a low vision,
portable CCTV
tablet,
I know exactly how to use it, and
I know that the software is going to
work. Whereas if I pick up my iPhone
and there's an update,
say, for the Audible app
or, the LMS Smart application
or the Kindle app.
I don't know what that
experience is going to be like, and it
may break a
functionality of the device that I use on
a daily basis.
And
I would much rather go to a device
where I know what I'm getting
than a device that
the experience might change from month to month,
and I have to learn a whole new
way of doing it. I think it's a
really fair explanation
as to, you know, as you said, being
at the mercy of
developers and app developers and and what may
or may not work in an app and
finding different apps and being able to just
go to a device like this that
you expect. And and, of course, there still
could be bugs and then things can still
happen. But but you know that for the
most part, it's just going to work. As
so so you talked about the internal workings
and and and that part of the Victor
Reader Stream, third gen.
What would you say about the the externals,
you know, the tactile nature of it, being
able to grip that device in your hand
compared to using a smartphone? I know a
lot of people really just
like and enjoy having that feeling Yeah. Right
in the palm of their hands. Sure. So
tactile
is a great thing. I know that if
I drop the stream, it's not gonna
have glass shards all over the place. I'm
gonna have to go buy a new $500
phone or a thousand dollar phone to get
it replaced.
It had to transfer all that data.
Whereas with the the stream,
the tactile clickiness of just buttons in general
is something that
smartphones
can try to replicate, but they haven't been
really successful at it.
A good case in point is with
me being being a musician,
I've got a couple
a couple of,
instructional,
material
books from Diana Spard
that I
am learning a few songs with. And,
yes, I could use my iPhone
to use the Bard app.
But if if I want to go back,
I have to hear find the rewind button,
double tap it, here voice over say rewind,
it missed half of what the instructor is
saying. To whereas, if I go over to
my stream, I know that I could just
hit that rewind button and not have to
worry about anything speaking ahead of the instructor
and being able to focus on the information
at hand as well. And having that tactile
button knowing, okay,
that rewind button is three over on the
bottom. There it is. And it's a,
inverted,
less than sign pretty much, and just being
able to hit it and know that that
action's gonna be completed and know that focus
isn't gonna jump around to a back button.
I'm gonna be
jumped out of my application
or every anything that I'm doing and have
to go and find my way back into
the application.
I think you sold it right there because
I don't know how many times I'm in
an application, no matter what it is, if
it's audible or or barred or some any
actually, really any app, and you know where
the button should be and you can't find
it. And even if you're using your rotor
and trying to swipe by buttons or headings
or form controls or whatever it is, your
focus gets messed up or you swipe swipe
swipe swipe swipe swipe swipe swiping your way
through, and then you finally find it. And
then, you know, it's just it it
it most of the time is really easy,
but it it
can be quite difficult and, in trying to
find what you want. And so being able
to have a tactile button that you just
just go right to it and hit it.
So I mean, that that makes a lot
of sense.
Yeah. It it it can be, and it
does make a lot of sense. And I'll
even take it even further. Let's say you
try and there's an update,
and
everything's still in the same place, and you
hit the play button, the app crashes. And
Yes. Something happens to where now the book
that you have played
is now not downloaded to your device.
You've you've been signed out of your Audible
account or whatever account you're you're looking at,
your your Internet Spy account. You've got to
re sign back in.
That is gonna take a few minutes to
whereas if I have a stream
if it to read a stream,
I know that I'm not gonna be signed
out anything.
And I I I'm exactly where I was
the last time I turned off the device.
Fantastic. I love it. I think that that's
a really great use case and and explanation
of of why people would want to use
this, you know, somebody from from a smartphone.
I did want to touch on something else
that has been a bone of contention
as well.
Sure. So there used to be,
with the second generation,
the Audible
and Amazon,
had broke Audible support,
so you weren't able to download
audible content.
There was an open letter that circulated, and,
I got to say a big thank you
to Jonathan Mohsen and the Mohsen at Large
podcast. He,
put this out
and asked people to sign it.
And I was I, along with a bunch
of other people, about 600 plus people had
signed it and added my name to it.
It has come out that
the audible sync
will work.
It was actually slated
that it was gonna be at launch. Now
it's not. Now we're looking at, you know,
a software update,
around the April or May time frame, and
that is because
Amazon and the HumanWare have to work together
to make sure that it all works
out perfectly. So
if you're holding off to buy the Victory
Edition because
it doesn't have audible content, just know that
it's coming. And I always tell people, look.
Don't buy a device for what it
will promise to do in the future because
it may not ever come to that. Buy
it for what it can do now.
And so it's great that that has been,
taken care of and that
Amazon actually
has to send,
to its
peep to the blind community at large and
thinks that it's a great investment,
to continue the support.
I'm going to write that up, Aaron, because
I did hear some folks at HumanWare talking
about that here recently surrounding the the, you
know, launch of the Victor Reader Stream third
gen Okay. And this, you know, audible sync
issue. And I've actually heard them even say
that even though the full rollout and full
fix might be another, you know, month or
two or a couple months,
they've actually started seeing some of it kind
of out in the wild,
people already reporting that it might be working.
And so that that's something that's definitely, you
know, worth looking at is that, you know,
it's being worked on, maybe even in in
more in real time than we realize. And
and yeah. So so if it is something
that that you've heard about and you're like,
well, the audible sync in the past just
wasn't working, and I've heard horror stories, etcetera
That's right. You know, it it obviously is
being worked on because even human words are
saying, yeah. We're we're kinda seeing this trickle
out, and and we have this expectation, like
you said, Aaron, of, you know, within the
next few months, you know, from now, that
this should be completely fixed. So I I
am very glad to see that Amazon, at
least in this case, is is doing something
right and doing something good and and getting
Audible to work for us. Because my my
understanding is that HumanWare actually sent Audible, the
folks at Audible, a a demo,
model of the Victor Reader Stream three and
let them work with it and play with
it. Yeah. And so I'd love that there's
that kind of partnership,
between the different companies to be able to
work on these kind of things.
Yeah. It it it is it is great.
And one thing I will say is there's
other services. If you did want to rely
on Audible, there's,
a service called ebrady.fm
that does sort of the same thing. And
it's not DRM content that you just pay
and get m p three files, and you
can do whatever you want with them. And
I will say as somebody who's been on
the inside
in a recruiting capacity
at Amazon,
it is a huge company, and I don't
think people understand how large
this company is. Multiple departments. I was recruiting
for solutions architects, and, basically,
they would go in and,
basically, do be a a salesperson
for the Amazon Web Services platform.
And that was only one
department out
of thousands of different departments. So it does
take time,
but I will state as well and say
too that sometimes
there has to be pushback in order for
them to make a decision because Amazon is
so data driven
that sometimes
the data
that is being used,
is not as accurate as what the market
wants it to be. And so if we
push this, hey. This is really important, and
we do advocacy
around these specific things,
then that's just another data point for them
to say, hey. Actually, what we have is
not reflecting what
these
data points out in the world and these
people have been saying about this about this
and let's actually get it done. And so
that's how things get kicked up in Amazon
a lot faster as if there's a bunch
of different more active data points than what
they have internally within their systems.
Very well said, Aaron. I I I think
that it's important to note that that, you
know, there there is a lot going on
behind the scenes here, and
it it is working, thankfully. There things are
being done. So good on them for for
getting that taken care of.
So I'm sure people are wondering now at
this point,
when can they get their hands on this?
How much is it gonna be? My my
understanding is that it will be coming out
in The US first, followed maybe a month
or so later by Canada and then The
UK and and then the rest of of
the world. But, can you give us kind
of an idea of the the timeline for
that and and what these are gonna cost?
Sure. I can. So you're correct.
The
Victory Stream third generation will be coming out
in the February
for The United States and then a month
later
in March for Canada and everywhere else.
There's been a there's been a bit of
a a price increase just like everything else,
around the world has hiked up in price.
We're looking at a price of $550.
Unfortunately,
there is no trade ins or anything because
these devices are such
a small margin that they can't do that,
and we can't do that as a company,
unfortunately.
Well, Aaron, I really hope that we've given
a lot of information to those folks out
there that are interested in the Victor Reader
Stream third generation. If you've had a previous
generation or are just kinda curious about a
device like this, whether you use a smartphone
or not, I think it's something that, is
still good to have in the conversation and
and maybe even something to have in our
our blindness toolkits,
that people can can still utilize.
And, so I really appreciate you coming on
and talking to me about this. Now I
know that with your work as a product
support specialist, you've kinda got your finger on
the pulse of a whole bunch of different,
you know, products and services and apps, devices.
You name it. You you you're kind of
the guy that knows what's going on. And
so I'd really love to have you back
on the show sometime that we can talk
about other things outside of, something like the
Vicky reader and and break down some other
products and things that that you feel are
important that we need to know about.
Sure. No no problem. And and I will
point out there too is,
my contact information for live computers. If you
wanna get a hold of me, ask questions
about
the, Victory to Stream third generation, or you
want to buy one from us,
my number is 50244724586,
or you can email me
at aaron@labcomputers.com.
That's aaron@labcomputers.com.
Very good, Aaron. I appreciate that. And, yeah.
Thank you so much again for coming on
the show. Look forward to talking to you
again soon.
Thanks, Sam. I really enjoyed it and looking
forward to talking again as well.