Lucent Technologies Provides Speech Recognition Software for e.Digital's New MXP 100 Digital Music & Voice Player
Business Editors & High-Tech Writers
SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 5, 2001--
e.Digital Introduces VoiceNav(TM), The First Spoken-Word Recognition
and Navigation Interface for Portable Devices
e.Digital Corp. (OTC:EDIG), a global provider of comprehensive digital product development and designs, and Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) today announced their collaboration on a speech interface for portable electronic devices.
e.Digital's VoiceNav(TM) voice navigation interface was developed utilizing a voice recognition engine from Bell Labs' Advanced Technologies, a division of Lucent's research and development arm, which pioneered speech recognition technology.
VoiceNav is now available to consumers for the first time in e.Digital's new MXP 100 portable digital music and voice recorder/player, which features hands-free navigation using spoken word commands. e.Digital also incorporates Texas Instruments' low-power TMS320C54x(TM) digital signal processor (DSP) into the MXP 100's design, facilitating an advanced feature set, and providing compatibility between various software and firmware components.
"The consumer launch of the MXP 100, the first portable product to feature an interface based on our speech recognition engine, could create a new market and other opportunities for Lucent's speech recognition technology," commented Monte Stimmel, licensing manager in the Technology Licensing Solutions group at Lucent. "Drawing on e.Digital's expertise in low power, small footprint applications, we are able to support more than 100,000 words and names in their music player, plus flexibility for English words or sounds not in the dictionary. We expect this to be the first of many voice recognition applications for portable devices, and we are enthusiastic about the potential to work with e.Digital on additional product opportunities."
"We are pleased to team with Lucent on this exciting breakthrough for portable digital music players," said Fred Falk, president and CEO of e.Digital. "Their voice recognition engine, tailored by our engineers with our MicroOS(TM) 2.0 audio file management system, produces a natural speech interface for portable devices.
Falk continued, "VoiceNav's fast response, expansive English vocabulary, and speaker-independent recognition of artist, band, album, and track names, will provide end users with easy access to a complete portable, personal audio library, and allow virtually hands-free operation of the MXP 100. With VoiceNav, users can navigate through the storage media, open folders, and play stored music or voice tracks without touching a button. They can create up to 100 music folders containing up to 100 tracks each and navigate through them simply by saying their titles aloud."
e.Digital's MXP(TM) Music Explorer software, shipped with the MXP 100, is the gateway to using the company's VoiceNav interface on the MXP 100. Music Explorer's user-friendly PC interface insures that track titles and artist or album information from digital music tracks are saved and transferred to the MXP 100 as recognizable phrases. The software allows users to transfer and organize enough music content to fill any hard disk drive (HDD) based portable jukebox product.
Chris Schairbaum, worldwide marketing manager of Internet Audio at Texas Instruments, commented, "Using TI's powerful DSP technology, and Lucent's Bell Labs' speech recognition engine, e.Digital has developed a creative and innovative product. The MXP 100 demonstrates the flexibility of TI's programmable DSP and provides a glimpse of the future of consumer electronics and digital audio devices."
About Bell Labs & Lucent Technologies
With approximately 16,000 employees in 16 countries, Bell Labs is the leading source of new communications technologies. Bell Labs has generated more than 28,000 patents since 1925 and has played a pivotal role in inventing or perfecting key communications technologies, including transistors, digital networking and signal processing, lasers and fiber-optic communications systems, communications satellites, cellular telephony, electronic switching of calls, touch-tone dialing, and modems. Bell Labs scientists have received six Nobel Prizes in Physics, nine U.S. Medals of Science and six U.S. Medals of Technology. For more information about Bell Labs, visit its Web site at http://www.bell-labs.com.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, designs and delivers networks for the world's largest communications service providers. Backed by Bell Labs research and development, Lucent relies on its strengths in mobility, optical, data and voice networking technologies as well as software and services to develop next-generation networks. The company's systems, services and software are designed to help customers quickly deploy and better manage their networks and create new, revenue-generating services that help businesses and consumers. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit its Web site at http://www.lucent.com.
About e.Digital
e.Digital Corp. offers an engineering partnership for the world's leading electronics companies to link portable digital devices to PCs and the Internet. e.Digital develops and markets to consumer electronics manufacturers complete end-to-end solutions for delivery and management of open and secure digital media. Applications for e.Digital's technology include portable digital music players and voice recorders, desktop, laptop and handheld computers, PC peripherals, cellular phone peripherals, e-books, video games, digital cameras and digital video recorders. Engineering services range from the licensing of e.Digital's patented MicroOS(TM) and MicroCAM(TM) technologies to custom software and hardware development, industrial design and manufacturing services. For more information on the company, please visit www.edig.com. The MXP 100 is available to consumers at http://www.edigital-store.com.
Safe Harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform of 1995: This document contains forward-looking statements relating to future performance, technology and product development that may affect future results and the future viability of the company. Actual results could be affected or differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of risks and uncertainties, including future products and results, technological shifts, potential technical difficulties that could delay new products, competition, general economic factors, and conditions in the markets in which the company operates, pricing pressures, the uncertainty of market acceptance of new products and services by OEM's and end-user customers, and other factors identified and discussed in the company's most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements are based on information and management's expectations as of the date hereof. Future results may differ materially from the company's current expectations.
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