Long time readers, and listeners, know that the BBQ Crew has some complicated audio and visual setups when it comes to consuming content on the web. But not everyone wants to go to that extreme. That's why J.J. took a moment to speak with Fabien Jeannau, Founder and CEO of Voxiweb, about the upcoming U.S. launch of VoxiTV. The product can be purchased as a set top box, with remote, or as stand alone software for a tablet. The easy to use menu driven interface contains more than 75 services broken down into 8 categories. J.J. takes a tour of the set top box itself, describes the included remote and learns about some of the connection options that are available for that version of the service. For more information, keep watching the Inside Vision U.S. website for details about pricing and launch specifics
CSUN 2019 coverage is Brought to you by AFB AccessWorld.
For the latest news and accessibility information on mainstream and access technology, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offerings, access technology book reviews, and mobile apps, and how they can enhance entertainment, education and employment, log on to AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind's free, monthly, online technology magazine. Visit www.afb.org/aw.
Transcript
We strive to provide an accurate transcription, though errors may occur.
Hide transcriptTranscribed By Grecia Ramirez
Direct from Anaheim, it’s blindbargains.com coverage of CSUN 2019, brought to you by AFB AccessWorld.
For the latest news and accessibility information on mainstream and access technology; Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offerings; access technology book reviews and mobile apps and how they can enhance entertainment, education, and employment, log onto AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind’s free monthly online technology magazine, www.afb.org/aw.
Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.
J.J. MEDDAUGH: Blind Bargains at CSUN 2019. Love finding new products that we didn’t expect to see here. I’m here with Fabien Jeanneau. He is the founder and CEO of Voxiweb, and in front of me is a device called VoxiTV.
Fabien, welcome to the podcast.
FABIEN JEANNEAU: Hello. Welcome.
JM: So why don’t you explain to me exactly what we have here?
FJ: Here, we have a television to make easy access to internet. VoxiTV is two thing: One box and one remote. You plug the box to the TV, and then you control everything with the dedicated remote control with large high contrasted button and speech recognition.
JM: There’s lots of different services on here. And where’s the remote sitting? Is this the correct remote to play with?
FJ: Yeah.
JM: Okay. Great. So why don’t you describe to me, the buttons on this, and then we’ll play with this a little bit.
FJ: Okay. So on the top of the right, you have the Home button to return to the Home screen.
JM: That’s a round button.
FJ: Yeah. Then, you have the Speech Recognition button. When you push the button, you can command an order, just insert text in input field. Then, you have Up and Down button to navigate in the menu. And Okay and Return to validate or go back.
JM: So is Return this one, right here?
FJ: No. The biggest one is Okay, validate.
JM: Oh. Okay.
FJ: And on the left is Return.
JM: It’s kind of a four-way control. So up is on the top and –
FJ: Yeah –
JM: Below that is -- to the left is an arrow for Back.
FJ: Yeah. There is no Right and Left, but Up, Down, Back –
JM: -- Back and Return.
FJ: Yeah. Then, you have the multimedia buttons with Play/Pause; a Program, a round button. And on the left and the right, you have Forward and Rewind.
JM: Rewind on the left?
FJ: Yeah.
JM: And Forward on the right?
FJ: Yeah. Then, you have the volume button, Up and Down.
JM: Down on the left?
FJ: Down on the left. Yeah.
JM: And Up on the right?
FJ: Yeah.
JM: And then one more button on the bottom.
FJ: Option. For example, you are in an Email, you want to reply, view attachment, forward -- that’s a function of this button.
JM: Okay. So if I want to get started, do I press this – the Home button at the top?
FJ: If you want, but by default, you are on the Home screen, so you don’t have to do nothing, just to press Down button --
JM: Okay.
FJ: -- to navigate through the menu.
JM: And you were telling me there’s 75 services that you support?
FJ: Yeah. 75 from Email, press, dictionary, transport –
JM: Are they in categories? That’s a long menu.
FJ: Yeah. We have, on the main menu, eight major categories. Then you have subcategories.
JM: Okay.
FJ: And –
JM: Well, let’s – here. I’ll tell you what. I’ll press Down arrow, and –
FJ: Yeah.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Emails: One unread.
JM: So Email.
FJ: Yeah. It says I have one unread in my inbox.
JM: Okay.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: News: CORE radio, music.
JM: So that’s radio. And is that, like, TuneIn Radio and things like that, or is it your own –
FJ: You have radio, podcasts, we have redesigned Spotify, you have song lyrics --
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: TV, video.
FJ: So in TV, Video, you have TV Guide; you have Live TV; YouTube; a video conference; Skype patch. So you have to plug a webcam on the box, and you can communicate via video.
JM: Okay.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Books.
FJ: Books: For the moment, you have BookShare, so you can download or listen directly books from VoxiTV. And we’re going to implement the Congress library.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Practical life.
FJ: This is a category with a lot of things. We have, for example, weather, horoscope, transportation, with itinerary, Uber. You have tools, for example, password tracking, parcel track notice. So you have a lot of services.
JM: What kind of tracking?
FJ: Parcel, like DHL or UPS.
JM: Oh. Parcel. Okay. Uh-huh.
FJ: So you have a lot of –
JM: -- miscellaneous services.
FJ: Yeah.
JM: Okay.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Hobbies, culture.
FJ: Here, you have a dictionary, Wikipedia. You have games; cooking recipe; for example, movie theater hours, and so on.
JM: So you have redesigned all of these apps and made them into a more simplified interface?
FJ: Yeah. In each category, you have the same navigation, whatever content is it. If it’s movie or it’s text, yes. This is always the same navigation.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Shopping.
FJ: Shopping, just for the moment, you can consult online websites, for example, you can navigate in Amazon website. But not just -- for the moment, not buy them. Just view online services.
JM: Okay.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Internal storage, USB drive.
FJ: So in the box, you have 32 gigabytes available, so you can download, for example, inside, or you can plug your USB key and browse video, audio, photo, also EPUB, .TXT file. Very easy.
JM: Let’s describe the box for people. So this box could plug into a TV --
FJ: Yeah.
JM: -- or you have a headphone jack on it. There is an HDMI output.
FJ: Yeah. You have two ways. Either you can use it on your TV with HDMI. You can plug a headset, or to iFi and use it without TV for blind people, for example.
JM: And there’s a couple of USB ports to plug in –
FJ: Yeah.
JM: -- storage.
FJ: You have two USB, for example, for a USB key, or you can plug a webcam or camera, because we have also an accessory, a camera with OCR.
JM: Hmm.
FJ: You have also a microSD card. So yes. You have a lot of possibilities.
JM: And I saw – is there wired and wireless networking on this?
FJ: Yeah. You can connect to internet with Ethernet or Wi-Fi. And also you have Bluetooth on the box if you want to connect a keyboard or something like this.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Open My Account settings.
FJ: In here, you can manage your account and settings. For example, you can change contrasts, text size, and other stuff.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Help, contact us.
FJ: This is the Help section with Tutorial and Frequently Asked Questions.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: End. 12, Help, contact us.
JM: Okay. So the end.
FJ: This is the end – yeah – of the list.
JM: So this is based, loosely at least, on Android. Do I have the ability to download apps from Google Play if I would like?
FJ: No. No. This is a closed system. We have redesigned all apps, so we have to make sure, before using it, that they are fully accessible. So you can’t just download an app from the Play store.
JM: Okay. Well, let’s try one of these out. Perhaps -- maybe Spotify.
FJ: Yeah. If you want, Spotify.
JM: Yeah. Okay. Let’s go up to that. So I’m going to press Up arrow a bunch of times.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, book – 5, TV – four, radio, music.
JM: And I’m going to press Okay; correct?
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Radio.
JM: All right. And now I’ll press Down arrow.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Two, podcasts. Three, Spotify.
JM: And we’ll press Okay.
FJ: Yes. So the Wi-Fi is slow.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Spotify. One, search.
FJ: Yeah. You – here, you are logging my account. So you have search, and then you have my playlists, New Release.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: My playlists.
JM: Shall we see what you listen to?
FJ: Yeah. I share with my daughter, so --
JM: Oh. I pressed Okay again.
FJ: Okay. So –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: My playlists: 63 results.
FJ: So I have created a --
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: One double A nine: 0.
FJ: Yeah. So this is just an empty folder, but you can continue with –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Black M: 6.
FJ: For example, we can all – to go to Discovery Weekly -- Discover Weekly --
JM: Oh. Sure.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Kids New Moment: 50.
FJ: Yes. This is in French.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: For Your Time Capsule: 55.
JM: For Your Time Capsule. Well – so the thing I noticed about this, and all of the other menus, is that they are very consistent. Everything is Up and Down to go through menus, and then Okay to select and Back to cancel.
FJ: Yeah. So you can go down to Discover Weekly, for example.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Discover weekly: 30.
FJ: Then you click okay. So here, the Wi-Fi is bad, so --
JM: Yeah.
FJ: -- takes a few seconds, but normally, it’s very easy. So –
(Music.)
FJ: So you can play/Pause.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Pause. 5 minutes, 05 seconds of 2 minutes, 29 seconds.
FJ: If you want to know the name of the tracks, you just have to use the Up and Down arrows.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Peace: A mushroom cloud, Bormin’.
JM: Ah. There you go.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Button, previous.
FJ: If you want to go to the next tracks, you can use Forward and Rewind. So Forward and Rewind, if you press one, you just forward and rewind. And if you press three seconds, you go to the next and previous track.
JM: Were there volume buttons?
FJ: Yeah.
JM: That’s right. Below the Play and Pause and Previous and Next.
FJ: Yeah.
JM: Okay. And that’s really cool. So all the other services pretty much operate in a similar way?
FJ: Definitely, yes.
JM: So if people want to purchase this, would you buy the box and then it comes with the software?
FJ: Yes. Everything is included. So they buy the software – the box and the remote, and everything is ready from the beginning. Yeah.
JM: So Insidevision is going to be selling this here in the U.S. And how much is it going to be?
FJ: Yes. It will be 600 Euros.
JM: Okay.
FJ: And also, our services is also available on tablet and smartphone via an app. So you can find the same contents with the same – when you buy VoxiTV, you can also use it on a tablet. So you have, to understand, the same content.
JM: Uh-huh.
FJ: You operate the contents the same way, and you can find it also on tablet or smartphone.
JM: Can you buy just the software on a tablet, or can you –
FJ: Yes.
JM: And how much does that cost?
FJ: It’s 99 Euros a year. It’s a subscription.
JM: And can you buy the remote separately?
FJ: You mean just the remote?
JM: Yeah. Like, would it – if it’s – is it a Bluetooth remote, or is it infrared?
FJ: Yeah. It’s Bluetooth. Not for the moment, but we’re thinking to sell the remote separately for using, for example, on your computer, replacing a keyboard or a mouse with your tablet.
JM: Okay. When do you expect it to be available?
FJ: Maybe three or four months. It will – the time first, to finalize the U.S. version with all U.S. content.
JM: Great. If people want to get more information, where should they go?
FJ: Insidevision-us.com.
JM: Great. Thank you so much for sharing. Really appreciate it.
FJ: Thank you, J.J.
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Joe Steinkamp is no stranger to the world of technology, having been a user of video magnification and blindness related electronic devices since 1979. Joe has worked in radio, retail management and Vocational Rehabilitation for blind and low vision individuals in Texas. He has been writing about the A.T. Industry for 15 years and podcasting about it for almost a decade.
