Original Victor Reader Stream eBook player, model 303, front view, horizontal.
This is our Victor Reader Stream 303 review. Now this eBook player from Humanware, revolutionized high performance coupled with near micro miniaturization, when released in around 2007.
Since then, several firmware updates have enhanced this audio book player’s stability. Now, this original version has evolved into a rock solid talking book and DAISY book player. It also does voice recording and MP3 file playing too.
The Stream Victor Reader 303 further contains a voice synthesizer. This can “read” text files for sight-impaired users.
Now Humanware replaced this Victor Reader with a much more feature-packed, smaller unit This is the New Generation version. Nonetheless though, this original version will likely remain useful to the blind listeners for years to come. As long as you can buy new batteries and chargers, people will want to keep using the 303.
Unfortunately, few model 303 Victor Readers show up on eBay currently. So it seems that when people buy the Stream for approximately $350 retail, they rarely sell it. They continue using it until it wears out.
We’ve used the original Stream since 2009 for journaling, note taking, and playing talking books, podcasts, and text files. Plus, we like it so much that we have no plans to sell ours either. It’s a great portable player over all. Now we appreciate all the new features of the Victor Reader 2. But it saddens us that the debut version is no longer available from Humanware. Time marches on indeed, which is the way of electronic technology.
Replacement batteries and power adapters are still available at the Humanware Store web site.
Fully accessible device for vision-challenged users. Access all menus via the provided voice prompts. You need no sighted assistance to set up and configure the 303 Victor Stream.
The default Samantha and Tom text-to-speech voices are highly intelligible, and not too monotonous. The 303 has the usual speech inflections. Like when it sees a question mark or explanation point in the text it reads.
The Victor Reader Stream is also a digital recorder. Indeed it produces very clear-sounding audio recordings. These it saves on an SDHC memory card.
The highly compressed 3gp audio file format sounds quite natural when recording speech. Plus it occupies very little space (9.1 megabytes per hour). That means that on a 2 GB memory card, you can store up to 219.78 hours of recording.
A 2 gigabyte memory card ships with the 303. This is a removable SDHC memory card. So it’s nice store notes and talking books on a collection of memory cards like SDHC. Then, you play the card you wish, just like you do with discs in a CD player.
Plays in stereo when you use stereo headphones and ear buds.
The buttons are large enough and spaced far enough apart to assure easy operation. The over all size of the unit fits well into the palm of the hand. No need to make it any smaller, although the new Stream is 28% smaller.
Plays DAISY 3 and NISO 2005 eBooks.
Features a bright LED pilot lamp that glows solidly when the player is running.
Plus, this lamp blinks when the 303 Victor Reader is off and charging. It goes out when charging from the wall adapter is complete and you switch the unit OFF. Find this light above the book shelf and book mark keys. It is also beneath the speaker and mic grills, on the face of the unit.
You can play the 303 while its lithium ion battery charges.
Extensive operating instructions Humanware provides on the web. Furthermore, you also get text versions on the 2 GB SDHC card that comes with the unit.
The key panel features the following.
The left side of this Victor Reader Stream has the Power and Volume keys. The right side sports the Record button, along with jacks for an external microphone and stereo headphones.
We find the SD card slot on the top of the unit, along with the USB and power adapter ports.
User replaceable lithium ion battery. On a full charge, this removable battery lasts about fifteen hours. This assumes average volume levels.
Appears to be a USB 1.1 port. Interesting, because when this Victor Reader Stream first appeared on the scene, USB 2.0 was already around.
Cannot charge this Stream through the USB port. A separate barrel style power connector is provided for that. So, the so-called “universal” USB wall chargers do not work with this reader. Fixed in the new generation Stream however.
The hot-pluggable features do not work in this first Victor Reader Stream. So to use the Humanware Companion software, you must first power down the Stream. Then connect it to your computer via the long USB cable. Then finally turn the Stream back on. Thus, you can’t just plug in the Stream to the computer while it is ON. Why not? Because correct hardware recognition by the computer will not occur in that case.
You can’t check the time of day. Furthermore this unit does not set the timestamps voice memo files that you create on this device. This can create problems. Especially when you want to know the exact date and time for a recording. However, this too they solved in the next generation Stream version.
The 3gp format audio files this digital recorder creates will not play in popular media players like Winamp and QuickTime. However, they do play well on the digital talking book players from the National Library Service for the Blind. The new gen Stream does not create 3gp files; only WAV and MP3.
Indeed you can place podcast audio files on an SDHC card, and play them on this device. But this unit does not automatically download new podcast episodes. Nor does it automatically delete episodes to which you’ve already listened. These podcast features however, they did add in next generation Victor Reader.
Firmware updates are a bit cumbersome to apply, and require a computer to complete. Again, they addressed this in later Stream versions.
Does not correctly recognize the 64GB SD cards. Either you can only access a part of the card. Or or the machine simply issues the “No Media” message with these BIG cards.
The included loudspeaker is not much bigger than a fingernail, and so, is not that loud. Humanware prioritized compactness in this unit over a great-sounding, larger speaker system. So, it’s hard to hear this Stream 303 in noisy areas. Then, when you do hear it, its monophonic sound lacks bass and low midrange frequencies.
Does not remember separate volume settings for the built in speaker and headphones. So be careful when switching from loudspeaker listening to earphones. Why? Because the speaker generally requires a higher volume setting than the headphones. So turn the volume down before plugging the headphones in. Otherwise the loudness may startle you and hurt your ears.
To play NLS books, requires authorizing user key files. You get these files from NLS and Humanware.
Firmware updates no longer issued. The last issued version we know of was version 3.5.4.
Cannot play AAC or AAC+ encoded music files.
Does not stream audio from the Internet. No Internet radio functionality provided.
In fact, there’s no WiFi hardware included in this model of the Stream. So, all internet content you must first download to a PC. Then you copy thos files to the SD card.
The comments in this review came out of using version 3.5.4 of the firmware.
We continue to use the Victor Reader 303 Stream often, even though we have also a New Generation. We like the high-quality, low space recordings that this machine produces in the form of 3gp ANR Wideband Audio files. In fact, we wish that Humanware continued supporting 3gp in the later Stream. But since they haven’t, as of yet, we’ll keep journaling with the first stream model. And while doing that, hoping that they’ll reintroduce the ANR audio in the future. So we give this Victor Reader Stream a 96 out of 100. It has excellent overall performance, useability by the blind, and portability.
The JBL Go 2 speaker by Harman Kardon is a low power, hand-held style unit…
Shows how to fix Honeywell wireless thermostat connection failure issues. You might see these on…
Shows how to connect HP DeskJet 3630 series to WiFi. Note that doing this will…
Here, we show how to reset the Wonderboom speaker version 2. which returns it to…
We give here the JBL Clip reset directions, that return it to its default settings…
The JBL Boom Box JBL by Harman Kardon is a moderate to higher power, boom…
