My dad is legally blind but can still watch TV and read with magnification...so with that said my goal for him in his situation is to be able to do the following:
load all of his CD's on to a drive so they can be easily accessed via the TV screen much like Windows media center does. Song titles can be read. Cover art p etc. Played through TV and possibly better speakers. Is frankly annoyed by the thought of having to set up speakers. Currently using a very low end CD player.
Load family pictures in the same fashion and well as family videos. Play a few DVD. Also be able to switch back to TV with out much fiddling. He does have basic cable but no HD or DVR. Upgrade to HD TV is very likely.
I know what I have just described is essentially what a Windows media center PC will do but he doesn't own a PC or have interest or own a computer and he doesn't want one. This may change if it really needs to but I wanted to exhaust all other option before I went down that road.
The last option is would be a video camera system so reading material can be displayed on the HD TV screen so the need of using 10-12x map magnifiers is reduced for normal reading.
The biggest issue is the operation of the system needs to be fairly simple and user friendly.
load all of his CD's on to a drive so they can be easily accessed via the TV screen much like Windows media center does. Song titles can be read. Cover art p etc. Played through TV and possibly better speakers. Is frankly annoyed by the thought of having to set up speakers. Currently using a very low end CD player.
Load family pictures in the same fashion and well as family videos. Play a few DVD. Also be able to switch back to TV with out much fiddling. He does have basic cable but no HD or DVR. Upgrade to HD TV is very likely.
I know what I have just described is essentially what a Windows media center PC will do but he doesn't own a PC or have interest or own a computer and he doesn't want one. This may change if it really needs to but I wanted to exhaust all other option before I went down that road.
The last option is would be a video camera system so reading material can be displayed on the HD TV screen so the need of using 10-12x map magnifiers is reduced for normal reading.
The biggest issue is the operation of the system needs to be fairly simple and user friendly.
