HALvoices is here by popular demand of HAL users. We asked what you wanted most in HAL - and you told us you wanted HAL to sound more human. You wanted HAL's voices to sound less like a talking computer - and more like a person. Welcome to HALvoices!

HALvoices are designed to make HAL's award-winning natural speech home control software more personable as HAL confirms user commands and reads Internet information like stock quotes, Email, and much more.

HALvoices is an add-on product to the core HAL systems including HALbasic, HALdeluxe, and HALultra. HALvoices delivers state-of-the-art synthetic speech that is so human-sounding it's hard to tell the difference. Once you install HALvoices on your HAL system, you will have the choice of using either of the original male/female voices or the male/female voices of whichever version of HALvoices you install. The U.S. English version of HALvoices includes both male and female voices, Michelle and Michael, and the U.K. English version has Audrey and Charles (click here to hear samples of the different voices). You can use U.S. English or U.K. English HALvoices no matter which English version you're using for HALbasic, HALdeluxe, or HALultra. In other words, if you're using the U.S. English version of HALultra, then you can install either U.S. English or U.K. English HALvoices.

Eventually, we will offer a broad range of voices that may be used interchangeably with HAL systems.

Voice quality is a key feature in HAL home control systems. HAL software and hardware products give users the ability to control their homes - by voice - from anywhere. Users may speak to any microphone connected to the PC or to any phone anywhere to control lights, devices, appliances, thermostat, home theatre, security, telephone, and Internet with normal, conversational speech.

HAL's speech interface is interactive. HAL confirms user commands and retrieves Internet information on demand. Users may ask HAL to read stock quotes, news headlines, sports scores, weather reports, traffic, E-mail, and TV listings. Users may call the home from anywhere and tell HAL to read new E-mail messages or to turn on the front door lights and adjust the thermostat, etc. With HALvoices, you'll feel like you're talking to a person rather than a PC!

HALvoices represents a collaboration between Home Automated Living and AT&T. HALvoices employs the AT&T Labs Natural Voices text-to-speech engine. AT&T Labs has long been the world's speech technology pioneer, innovating the highest quality and most robust speech systems available anywhere. HAL built the AT&T technology into HALvoices because we found AT&T's technology to be the most realistic, human-sounding synthetic speech system available on the market today.

Improvements are being made in speech technology daily and HAL is working to include every technological advance in the HALvoices products. HAL users have grown accustomed to frequent free software updates. HALvoices will be updated similarly so you can be sure you will always have leading edge voice technology in your HAL system.