Samsung YV-150: Make your own audio book

We weren't expecting Samsung to create a digital audio player that converts text to speech, but you never know what those crazy Korean dudes are up to. It's called the YV-150 and it works with six languages, including English, Japanese and Chinese.

It'll play MP3, WMA and WMA-DRM files, has a loudspeaker, runs on two AAA batteries and it's got a microphone. But don't go thinking that's all. Along with a built-in FM tuner, you can dump your favourite text files into its memory and have the player convert them to voice, so it could read you the morning's newspaper, for instance. The resulting audio files can be transferred back to a PC.

Digital voice recorders are wonderful tools for the hungover student: simply set the device recording on your desk and pick it up when the headaches stop. Similarly, they're good for hungover lecturers too: simply leave the device playing back on the desk at the front of the lecture theatre and get back to bed. The climactic scenario renders lecture theatres useless, when both lecturer and student are replaced by digital recording devices. Gotta love the 21st Century.

Currently only the Chinese are going to get hold of a YV-150, and they sell for 1,299 Chinese yuan (£85) for the 512MB version, and 1,499 yuan (£99) for the 1GB model. We're waiting on confirmation from Samsung as to whether we're going to get to play with one in the UK. -Nate Lanxon

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Source: Everything USB on

• Tags:
• Samsung,
• Korean,
• desktops,
• UK,
• Japanese