Victor Reader Stream What’s New
Stream SoftPak Release Notes
HumanWare is pleased to introduce the Victor Reader
Stream SoftPak. The SoftPak is a set of optional software features that you can
enable by purchasing an activation key from HumanWare at a cost of $49USD. The
Stream SoftPak activation key can be purchased online www.humanware.com/softpak.
You will find on this page a form to purchase the
Stream SoftPak. Your purchase will provide you with a Stream SoftPak activation
file that has a KXO file type and is named with your Stream serial number.
Simply place this KXO file in the root of your SD card and when you power on
your Stream it will process the file and activate your Stream SoftPak features.
You will hear a message informing you that the SoftPak has been activated. You
must also install the Stream version 3.2 software upgrade prior to installing
this activation file.
The free Stream 3.2 software can be downloaded from
the Stream support page at:
http://www.humanware.com/stream_software
The Info key 0 will also report that you have the
SoftPak activated as part of the announcement of the Stream model number.
Following is a list of Stream SoftPak features.
A new format for commercial and public domain books is
called EPUB. This is an e-text book format. The Stream SoftPak can now play
unprotected EPUB books using its text-to-speech voice. Each EPUB book is a
single file that you place on the $VRDTB bookshelf. EPUB is a subset of the
DAISY specification so it does provide some basic navigation depending on the
book producer. Once again, as a Stream user, you are keeping pace with emerging
book formats. You will find many unprotected EPUB books already available on
the Internet from sources such as Gutenberg.org, the Internet Archive (www.archive.org), and Google. Indeed, you
may wish to refer to a blog from Google that announced the launch of their EPUB
repository of more than 1 million books. Visit:
http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/08/download-over-million-public-domain.html
Now, with your Stream, you have access to this
incredible wealth of new content.
In addition to the standard high quality AMR-WB+ 3GP
recording file type, the Stream SoftPak allows you to choose either mono MP3
96kbps or mono wav 16 bit PCM recording file types. Select the recording file
type using the Menu key 7. Press key 7 multiple times
to find the Recording menu. Then use the left or right arrows to choose either 3GP, MP3, or Wav. Press the pound key to confirm your
choice and the star or Cancel key to exit the menu. As you arrow across the
choice of file types the Stream will announce how many hours of recording
remain for each file type. Once you have confirmed your choice, all future
voice notes and audio bookmarks will be recorded in the chosen file type.
Your choice of file type will affect the size of the
recording files. Stream will produce similar quality with 3GP and MP3
recordings but the MP3 files will be considerably larger. Wav recordings
provide the highest quality but take the most space on your SD card. For
example, one hour of recording produces a 9 megabyte 3GP file, 41 megabyte MP3
file, or 303 megabyte wav file.
The Stream SoftPak supports the Advanced Audio coding found
in audio files of type mp4, m4a, m4b and m4v. The most popular source of these
files is the Apple iTunes store which offers millions of MP4 music and podcast
files that you will now be able to play on your Stream. Note that Stream
SoftPak only plays unprotected MP4 files. Files protected with DRM are not
supported. To acquire iTunes content you will require the iTunes program which
comes with every Apple MAC computer or a free iTunes version for Windows
computers which can be downloaded from:
Use the program to purchase content from the iTunes
online music store and download it to your computer. You can then transfer the
iTunes files to your Stream using Windows or the Stream Companion program.
In addition to the format 4
The Stream SoftPak will play the native Word 2007
documents that have a DOCX file type. If the DOCX document includes stylized
headings, you will be able to navigate the document structure using the 2/8
up/down arrow keys to select the heading level and the 4/6 left/right arrow
keys to move back and forth between the headings just like reading a DAISY
book. DOCX documents files are stored in the $VRText bookshelf of the Stream SD
card.
For additional information, please visit the Stream
SoftPak page at: www.humanware.com/softpak
[End of Document Revision 5-20100511]