Generating digital content for the media you already own is a frustrating experience.
Whether it’s buying up a single online you couldn’t get out of an old vinyl, or getting a digital version of a favorite book to read on your iPhone, it always takes just a little too long for a little too much money.
This is why plenty of people turn to pirated content and gadgets like the Book Reader V100, which his being shown at CES 2009 this year. Plustek’s $700 Reader scans books through a cool optical character recognition tech that understands words even when they’re faded or smudged on the physical page. It can duplicate books in PDF and various other file types.
But the killer app, and one whose ease of use is probably a bit controversial, is that the scan also automatically creates MP3 files of books. This means you can make an audio file of any book you own in only a few steps. This might not be Audible.com’s worst nightmare, if only because of the nice presentation of celebrity voice-overs of most audio books, but there’s no way they’d like their customers to know about it.
According to the company, setting up the book scan is simple – you just place the book on the base and the machine does the rest. (The sensitive curved lamp scan every word, even in the crack of the book’s spine).
We haven’t tried out the natural voice synthesis when the file reads the book back to you, but we can’t wait to try it. As long as it doesn’t crank up the high notes or sound like a robot, it could be a good gadget if the price goes down significantly.
Check out a video of the previous version of the scanner after the jump.
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