TTS will end working March 31, 2017,

Hi, got a mail from microsoft. They will terminate DataMarket March 31, 2017.
want us to move to azure. Minimum cost of TTS is about 5 dollars per month. is there any way to circumvent this??

"Beginning January 1, 2017, subscribers to the Microsoft Translator Text and Speech APIs will have limited access in Azure DataMarket. We recommend that you move to Azure now to avoid service disruption.

Here is a summary of changes: 

? You will not be able to upgrade or downgrade your subscription plan.
? DataMarket will no longer accept new subscriptions in 2017.
? Microsoft Translator, part of the Microsoft Cognitive Services collection of APIs, is now available in the Azure portal."

go into this thread
New TTS engine: Microsoft Translator

then read the post by “BOFH” and follow the video to get MaryTTS up and running… then you have a back up when Microsoft does go down in march…

Due to requirements for Azure for the developer having to provide a creditcard# et al, Lolodomo isn’t planning to support Azure and I can’t really blame him for that. Google’s TTS has gotten more and more unreliable over the last 6 months so that option is not a viable alternative. Unless Lolodomo decides to build in support for Amazon’s Polly (which is also a paid for service) we will be limited to using MaryTSS on a local computer or if you have a mac computer to use it’s TTS. MaryTTS is a multiplatform TTS written in Java that will run on Windows and Unix flavors and is quite easy to install. It does require that machine to be on 24/7. Since I already run a Windoze box for Blue Iris and Serviio, that was not a problem for me.

MaryTTS home page : [url=http://mary.dfki.de/]http://mary.dfki.de/[/url]
Github page : [url=https://github.com/marytts/marytts]https://github.com/marytts/marytts[/url]
Youtube Windows install video: Install Open Mary TTS in Windows - YouTube

@ BOFH , thanks for the links , this will be my little project for next week!

Cor

This is bad news. MaryTTS is not a good option for me, because it does not support my local language. One get used to the voice your system talk to you so this is like loosing a friend. :-*

Most of the messages I am using are static anyway so I think I would first go with static MP3 file approach and think about the dynamic message approach later in spring.
I did not find a way to capture the mp3-files from Microsoft TTS site. Can any one help?

I just posted this on another thread but I have a .net app for a Windows IIS server that uses Windows’ builtin TTS support. It is simple but, like MaryTTS, would require that you have a Windows box sitting around all the time.
PM me if you are interested.

There’s an online alternative to Microsoft at responsivevoice.org. Thanks to Cybrmage, there is support for that in the Sonos plugin now. See:

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,33223.msg312329.html#msg312329