-- article from BBC technology news -- 


Speak easy plan for media players

Bill Gates
"Play me something by the Beatles"
Music and film fans will be able to control their digital media players
just by speaking to them, under plans in development by two US firms.

ScanSoft and Gracenote are developing technology to give people access
to their film and music libraries simply by voice control.

They want to give people hands-free access to digital music and films in
the car, or at home or on the move.

Huge media libraries on some players can make finding single songs hard.

"Voice command-and-control unlocks the potential of devices that can
store large digital music collections," said Ross Blanchard, vice
president of business
development for Gracenote.

"These applications will radically change the car entertainment
experience, allowing drivers to enjoy their entire music collections
without ever taking
their hands off the steering wheel," he added.

Individual song

Gracenote provides music library information for millions of different
albums for jukeboxes such as Apple's iTunes.

The new technology will be designed so that people can play any
individual song or movie out of a collection, just by saying its name.

Users will also be able to request music that fits a mood or an
occasion, or a film just by saying the actor's name.

"Speech is a natural fit for today's consumer devices, particularly in
mobile environments," said Alan Schwartz, vice president of SpeechWorks,
a division
of ScanSoft.

"Pairing our voice technologies with Gracenote's vast music database
will bring the benefits of speech technologies to a host of consumer
devices and enable
people to access their media in ways they've never imagined."

The two firms did not say if they were developing the technology for
languages other than English.

Users will also be able to get more information on a favorite song they
have been listening to by asking: "What is this?"

Portable players are becoming popular in cars and a number of auto firms
are working with Apple to device interfaces to control the firm's iPod
music player.

But with tens of thousands of songs able to be stored on one player,
voice control would make finding that elusive track by Elvis Presley
much easier.

The firms gave no indication about whether the iPod, or any other media
player, were in mind for the use of the voice control technology.

The companies estimate that the technology will be available in the
fourth quarter of 2005.


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