http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproinstall/thread/c7409091-087e-48f2-8178-bcd918799054   explains the problem and solution for win7 voices
I use Ivona Amy, think you can trial it free for thirty days, she's lovely

http://www.bytecool.com/voices.htm    May help with the tts part.

A short testing report and more ideas for you (feel free to tell me to piss off btw).

The browse songs xml worked perfectly. The Jump to and Scroll and Starts with all worked, on and off again, got the operation timed out result after a while, seems to happen when i've issued a lot of commands quickly or when XBMC is doing something intensive like pausing a song/playing a movie/stopping movie/jumping to home/playing song.  Not real world usage really, so hopefully wont need the patient edition  
  ..and i still think xbmc or as you say the network is responsible. Incidentally, all my movies and tv shows are on a nas which sleeps when not in use, normally takes about five or seven seconds to wake it to play a movie. The songs are on this machine shared via samba /win7 homegroups majobby thing. Makes it very likely to be the network i'd think.

As for the upgrade, yeah, i know, gotta be done.. trouble with the backup database is that camelot to dharma loses thumbs and various other stuff. Couple that with the problems people are having with scraping currently, and it sorta sounds like a major p.i.t.a.  Plus, then along is gonna come (hopefully) soonish Eden... and no doubt that will bring it's own issues, and may have to do it all again.    Good news is tho', i'm currently installing/configuring dharma on this machine (as opposed to the htpc), so i can test where i sit. Only reason i haven't done it thus far is because i want it to work in the living room

On to the ideas; Sure i could (eventually) implement all these myself (honest), but i wouldn't deny you the pleasure.. lol. As i said before, i wont be offended if you say NO GODDAMMMIT! 
Much like the music options, how about a "what movie/show/episode is this?" 
Also, thinking about the xbmc clock, timers and the "finish time" mod/info in the pause menu, is there any way to ask xbmc what the current time is, what time the current movie or episode will finsh or to remind you when it's three o' clock?  Just blueskying it here..
Lastly, show unwatched movies?

Sure i can thing of ten more impractical things before tonight, so for now i'll leave it.

Read about this a while ago, good price for those cross atlantic folk. E-mailed Audiovox customer care an age back to find out if it can be used in the UK, but never did hear back.

http://gdgt.com/rca/voice-control-remote/rcrv06g/

Product page with manual download etc..      http://rcaaccessories.com/universalremotes/?sku=RCRV06GR

..lol..guess i am, and maybe i'll lear now cos the thing is..politely.."buggy". (Not so politely, crap!)
Two seperate programs, first for recording your own voice/tts, in a completely silent room (it was midnite gone), had it as too noisy (several attempts) and wouldn't continue. Doesn't bode well for real world performance.
The second prog, the ModelTalker, failed to start citing a missing .dll.  I found the .dll in the recorder part folder and managed to get it going. Was just beginning to mess when it crashed. Tried again and had maybe five minutes before the next crash, so i went to bed instead.
Ho hum, live n' learn. I'll keep an eye on it periodically.

WooHoo! Found this, think it will make even the crappiest microphone usable!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/HQ-Megaphone-Integrated-Microphone-Adjustable/dp/B0032YNRF6/ref=sr_1_464?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1286317677&sr=1-464

I just signed up, downloading as we speak and will have a play. Gimme a yell if you want me to up the packages somewhere

I was looking at this kinda thing;

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280566727133&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250632847623&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

'Chas reckon?

Ok, Finally got an hour, so played around with this (thought the title meant it was specifically for me) 

Preeety good i have to say, although i did have some issues, seems mainly with the KB emulation stuff.
Sometimes the "jump to" command, whilst recognised by VC, failed to act in XBMC. Same with the "starts with", and also "scroll/scroll fast", and maybe some other stuff. No real pattern to it, sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't. When the "jump to" worked, the "starts with" failed, or the scroll worked but the jump to wouldn't.
Didn't check the VC log, but did notice some time outs in the results window. However, sometimes the VC results window said all ok, but still nothing XBMC side.

Odds on, it's probably my iteration of XBMC, which is getting a little flakier by the day, especially since the new build, and the resulting path changes. Have tested dharma beta 2 extensively, and will probably make the jump soonish, but it still has some issues scraping a few of my tv shows. Plus, am loath to lose all the recently added and watched status info, and i just know it'll end up with a complete database rebuild.. or , worse still, a total reorganisation of all the friggin' files/nfos/fanarts/cleararts..etc..etc..   *sigh*.   Don't have a month free to spend on that!   

Incidentally, the "Browse unwatched episodes of.." worked flawlessly for me.

One more clue that points to VC not being to blame was the fact that my rf keyboard stopped actioning in XBMC at certain points too, although that also happens when i alt-tab to something then switch back to XBMC, some focus issues somewhere..

Anywayyyys..lol, s'enuff rambling from me i reckon, will have a further play tomorrow and report back if i find anything (more) useful.

Oh, one request if at all possible. Any chance of a "browse songs"? 

Regards, Mick.

Nice to see everyone keeping busy  
Just finished my new system build, so come Sunday i should have some time to play with the new xmls

Also saw your thread with regard to the json-rpc stuff over on the xbmc forum JJ, to quote "Awesome. That alone would make it totally worth the effort of recoding my app to use JSON! ".   Care to share any details?

Most of this stuff goes wayyyyy over my head.

One idea i thought i'd mention; Would it not be possible to use VC to build VC command trees/xmls/add parameters etc? In short, use the current VC to build it's successor?
..but then, it may get too intelligent, and not need you any more i guess   
Lol, anyways, just checking in, keep on keeping on.

The Amazon reviews of the logitech desktop usb mic are very positive, and it's not a lot of money to waste on trying, so i think i may give that one a whirl. Cheaper than the voicetracker at any rate. Ideally tho', i think we'd all like wireless.

With regards to controlling xbmc, would it be possible to search/play tv show episode by name and/or number, for example "play Glee season 2 episode 1"  or "play Glee S02E01", or maybe some kind of first episode marked as unwatched. "play Glee first unwatched" or "play Glee new episode" . 
On the same note, how would i go about making custom xbmc commands, the activate window stuff i see in the built list, or is that your job? I actually know nothing about the coding under the hood of xbmc, so really, i'm being very optimistic that i even could create anything, but i'm big on trial and error before i totally give up.
Great work you do, keep on keeping on

That nailed it, either the unchecking grammar options or the new .exe.  Thanks mucho 
Now i just have to buy a real microphone (as opposed to the £3.95 one i have)

Will give it a try tomorrow, past my bedtime currently   

..the web-server seems to be working for the simple stuff, all the settings are correct at least.
The generating of the xmls went all ok after i'd set the webserver running, and according to the log Vox loads them up ok.
Restarted plenty of time, mainly because xbmc stops responding quite often when i minimise it for too long, also it stop responding to keyboard presses after VC has interacted with it sometimes too.
Here's a copy of the log.. some strange looking stuff i noticed is the "play artist XXXX = do command "tvshow", buy i'll let you figure it out

..sorta works for me, using your xml commands, vox hears the correct phrase, and for basic commands it executes the action, but for "play movie" "find movie" "play artist" or song or anything of that nature, whilst the phrase is detected, nothing happens on xbmc. Vox log says something about the request timing out.

On a side note, i noticed that your video implies you'll begin charging for VC soon?