Hi all,
yesterday I had a chance to have a lookat the new Panasonic Viera
smart TV range which includes voice guidance and audio description as
mentioned on this list and on Insight radio last month.
On the plus side, you can choose male/female voice, set voice rate and
volume. The voice is good, it sounded better than my Goodmans Smart
talk box and more responsive.
IT speaks the channel, programme you are on and works within the
programme guide, but sadly doesn't work within the various settings menus.
Ironically therefore like audio description on DVDs you probably won't
be able to turn on the voice guidance without sighted help.
Sadly therefore and very frustratingly given the sheer amount of
functionality and connectivity these TVs have (Internet,
wifi,DLNA,USB,SD etc) most of the functionality will be wasted so far
as a visually impaired user is concerned.
There is a Viera remote control App for Apple devices, but i don't
think this will help in providing access to the multiplicity of set up
menus which controlmost of this very flexible TV's features.
The full price of the 32" model is around £499 though it will probably
be available cheaper if you look around.
whilst Panasonic are probably to be commended on including voice
guidance as standard across the range, it is nontheless very
frustrating to be in effect short changed by the limitations of what
they have provided.
I am going to try to speak to someone in panasonic technical
department and see if there is any way of getting the set up screen
information output to an external device which might give a way of
getting more access to these otherwise very impressive TVs.
Gary