Op Ed with Bob Branco – The Narrator Isn’t All That was Advertised
Several weeks ago, most of you heard about a wonderful new radio that Best Buy was selling called the Narrator. It is supposed to be the best radio for visually impaired people ever manufactured. While reading one of the original press releases, I was so enthused with the information that I ordered the Narrator myself. Why not? It is supposed to be extremely user friendly for the blind and visually impaired.
While it allows you to set the clock, the alarm, the radio band, and specific radio stations by using voice application, the Narrator does not totally perform as it was advertised. For example, in a press release I received as part of a mass email from a consumer organization, it states in one of the paragraphs as follows: “With speech turned on, the radio will announce the artist and song, and will show and announce visual images as well.” This is not true. Though the Narrator may display artist and song titles on the screen if you happen to find an HD radio station that provides that service, you won’t hear it in voice mode.
If a blind person hopes to use the menu or bookmark buttons to navigate the radio in voice mode, think again. Those two features are for just the sighted.
Although the Narrator comes with an audio CD instruction manual, which most people may feel is what you should read in order to use the product, the only section of the CD that benefits the blind is track 12.
If you feel that locating HD radio stations is difficult with the Narrator, well, it’s just as tough to tune in a regular A.M. station. The Narrator does not come with a normal telescopic antenna which you can rotate. It comes with two plastic shoelace Y-shaped antennas which you have to plug into two different adaptors on the back of the radio, and even after you plug them in, you have to swing the antennas around, especially the A.M. one, in order to pick up a station which may be as close as 25 miles away.
I have one more side note. Although Best Buy uses the Insignia label on the Narrator as well as other products, a representative from Insignia told me that the company had nothing to do with manufacturing the Narrator.
So, if you are blind and are satisfied with setting the clock and alarm on your own, finding and presetting radio stations and tuning into certain frequencies, then you will like the Narrator. But do not expect it to be the miracle radio that’s being advertised, because it isn’t.
If I am wrong about anything pertaining to my opinion of the Narrator, please feel free to point that out in the Reader’s Forum, or express any other comments you may have.
Thanks very much, bob, for pointing out shortcomings that might not be discussed in demonstrations.
Here’s a link to an audio demonstration of the Narrator HD Radio.
http://tinyurl.com/dxzazuo
Though we have not tried every feature, I believe it does the best job on the features most people want and like. Yes, I like to be able to set the time, and setting the alarm on on work days and off on weekends is good. It is very easy to set and use the presets and to scan up and down the frequencies. It would be nice if you could choose to hear the visual of the song and title, but I certainly would not want that talking automatically. It boarders on too much and too slow verbosity now. My biggest complaint is that the power cord is too short. It may not do everything, but it does do an good job for the money in my opinion.
I; too, purchased the radio. I find it reasonably useful but was also disappointed that the song and artist identification functions are not made accessible. Furthermore, it would have been nice to be able to switch to shorter messages since changing from one preset to another means that the voice will announce the preset up or down action, followed by the frequency of the station and this takes a couple of seconds, and the voice of the narrator is louder than the music volume and so I worry when tuning while another person is asleep in the room or area. I see that there is a reference to software and hardware version in the manual and that promises future revisions, I hope, but, there is not any connection on the unit that looks to allow such an update, thus, I would imagine that one would have to wait for the appropriate updates to take place and then buy that version of the radio? I realize that when such products are made available to the market, someone has indeed done us a service, and I don’t want to criticize that effort, but, maybe including some blind testers for early prototypes would help to refine the device and make it a winner for the blind user as well as the inventer and if we can get manufacturers having a successful sales outcome then it only serves to encourage more devices that include the blind consumer as a target market.