Digital Photo Frames

[Kopji]

Christmas / Hanukkah / Multi Holiday 2007

This seems to be the year that the digital frames are catching on in popularity. We picked up two Westinghouse DPF-0702 7" panels on Amazon for half price.

You might prefer its more cool sounding versions:
Cadre Photo Numérique Écran LCD 17.7cm
or
Marco de Fotos Digitales

The specs they advertise are 128mb internal storage, and the ability to plug in a variety of popular digital camera memory cards:

CF
MD
SD
MMC
xD
Memory Stick / PRO / Duo / PRO Duo (must be Sony)
USB drive

And a Mini USB for communication (not the crazy to find ultra mini's, just a regular mini USB)

The Westinghouse offers a maxrix display feature called MosaicView(TM) that autosizes and displays up to four photos at once.

My advice this season is to be more skeptical about these than I was. Perhaps by next year the technology will be better in the sub $100 price range.

First, check the screen resolution. They typically don't advertise this because they want you to assume that since they are talking about supporting 640x480 images and higher on a 16x9 ratio screen, they are at least 640x480 pixels. 'Wrong-o Marylou'. Most of the displays in the under $150 range are 480x234 pixels or less.

So for the Westinghouse with the MosaicView(TM), that can be four photos displayed at a whopping 120x58 pixels. Fortunately the feature is optional and you can use the full 480x234.

These are for the Grandmas and Grandpas who are generally impressed by anything overtly whizbang, so we may still be ok with this quality.

On to the next. Loading the frames is easy, they act like a regular USB drive. Copy over your jpg's or movie files. Neato.

After scanning a couple hundred old family photos and resizing them to about 640x480, only about 30 of them worked; the others displayed "Format not supported" in the frame's management utility. Aarrgh.

I quickly figured out on my own that the frames do not support grayscale jpg's. I simply converted the format to RGB and resaved. This fixed that problem.

The others that did not work were curious. Not size, not shape, not color depth... but jpg interlacing. The frame cannot handle anything but line by line jpg's. So opened each file, resaved as "Standard / Baseline" jpg. and voilà!

Moral of the story is spend more time looking at new fangled things ,and of course 'buyer beware'.

I noticed today that Kodak has some 10" frames that display at 800x480. Those looked pretty good but are still over $200 ea. Their lower end models display even lower than the Westinghouse though.

[Skeptical Greg]

Thanks for the info ...

I was shopping for one of these, and the resolution issue completely slipped my mind..

I had just bought this 10" model at Amazon, before considering the resolution ..

http://www.amazon.com/Coby-DP102-10-Inch-Widescreen-Digital/dp/B000MFG44Y/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1198177212&sr=8-1

Having read your post, I rushed back to check, and possibly cancel if the resolution was ridiculously low..

Amazon didn't list the resolution, but I was able to Google up some specs and came up with 800 x 480, so it looks like I should be O.K. in that regard.

I'll follow up with my impressions about the quality when I have had a chance to check it out..

[HarryKeogh]

I bought two 8" Kodak models the other day (one for a friend, one for parents). I saw the Westinghouse ones there too but on the Best Buy website all the reviewers were saying they were having problems with the Westinghouse models. So when I got to the store I went for the Kodak models. They only had about 5 units left. Never bothered to check specs though. I would have bought at Amazon but pickings were slim.

Of course my parents could care less about resolution. They'll be too fascinated by the magical picture frames.

[El Greco]

I was looking for such a frame with an internal clock that turns it off at specified times, eg every day from 23:00 to 07:00. Is there anything like that ?

[Kopji]

The physical construction quality of the Westinghouse looks good, but that's where it stops.

I am annoyed at the software, I'm glad we are giving these away as gifts. :rolleyes: It is not quite to the level of "buggy", but more like they decided it was 'good enough' and stopped development in favor of a late Friday afternoon kegger with some hot staffers from PF Chang's.

The transfer rate is USB 1.1 although the device pnp indicates it could do 2.0.
Message: this device can work faster blah blah, liar...

MosaicView displays photos in either 'original' format, or something called 'optimized'. the word 'Optimized' is used in a way I'm not entirely familiar. It seems to mean 'do whatever you need to do to the photo to make it fit neatly into the right sized squares' -and it is amazing. sometimes changes aspect ratio, sometimes cuts off heads, sometimes clips off of each edge.

You can put an "F" on certain favorite photos that is supposed to display them full size when they come up in the randomizer (I love that word). I might be doing something wrong but that feature did not work at all. I'll let the relatives figure it out.

128MB is plenty of internal storage. After four days of scanning and cropping old photos I only used about 47MB. A movie clip would be a different story. I could put a clip of Dumbledore waving in there or something. I don't think my mother in law would get it though.

[Kopji]

A clock would be a great idea. So no, maybe in version 1.001
The Westinghouse has an easy to use Activity Begin-Halt Function Initiator (on/off switch) and an Illumination Increase-Decrease rotary thumb activated control (a dimmer dial).

It does come with an AC adapter included.

Supports many languages, and is quite easy to accidentally select them: English, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch. I can confirm that at least the Portuguese language selects with minimal user intervention.

[WildCat]

I tried to buy one of those last Christmas, but could not find any in stock anywhere, either at a store or on the internet.

[Kopji]

Yeah, my wife is far more organized than I am, she had me order two back in November and I'm loading them this week. They were about $69 at the time, so I shouldn't complain too much.

[a_unique_person]

I bought a cheap QPix six months ago as a special. It had lousy resolution and colours, and the transitions were too rapid, you couldn't make it go as slow as I wanted.

Fortunately, it died after a few days, so taking it back and getting a refund was no problem.

I hate most of the frames. They are just too plasticy. There is an reasonable looking model available for $300 with a good resolution and a real wooden frame. $300 seems a little pricey, though, when you consider you can get a whole laptop for double that price these days.

[Kopji]

The Westinghouse frame might be real wood or a pretty good imitation; it Has an ebony look and feel to it similar to black piano keys. The best part of the frame is the physical quality and construction.

The internal packing was easy to unpack, load the frames with family pictures and then repack. I did not need to rip and tear anything.

This model had settings from 3 sec per photo change up to about 60 sec.

On to the next holiday slave labor event... cleaning the truck.

[tkingdoll]

Yeah, my major beef with these is that the frames are crappy. I have thousands of regular photo frames to choose from, but these gadgets are either faux-wood, plastic or chrome. I don't want a faux-wood, plastic or chrome picture frame in my home. I'll wait til there's a model with changeable frames and a decent choice, I think. It's a pure luxury item anyway, I can have photos as my screensaver or just look at Flickr, it's not like a gadget frame adds anything to my life. They are fun though, and a great gift idea.

[Kopji]

The wood seems to be real on the Westinghouse. I'll look again after they are unwrapped. It is a sad indictment on our world when faux wood is cheaper to put on something than real wood.

The controls are all out of sight and the frames would look in place on a shelf with a bunch of other photo frames. Wall mounting would not be a problem except for the power supply wire.

If you have really nice things in your house, IMHO there is a certain 'kitch' factor to the digital frames. Grandma collects porcelain cows so there's no danger of getting into trouble.

The frame starts right up when the power switch is turned on, so the technology level is pretty acceptable. We could put a selection of new photos on a memory card and they'd work right away too.

For the more cynical, you could have multiple memory cards with different selections on each card. When we came to visit you could have pictures of us, and when the rich in-laws come over you could switch to them.

We have a sort of mandate from the grandparents (our parents) not to spend much on them because they are getting older and reducing the useless stuff that they already have. The better frames are around $200-$300 right now but I'd be in trouble from them if I spent that much.

The 800x480 resolution seems like the minimum I'd recommend in hindsight, although if you run the frames at full resolution instead of the 'MosaicView' they are ok. Monochome saved as RGB actually looks very good, so you could convert your photos to greyscale and then save as RGB to good effect.

[Kopji]

Frame = Real Faux Wood

The pre-computer age parents and in-laws were all wowed by the cool new technology.

And lastly, the frames have a standard tripod mount on the bottom. No idea why.

I need to go rant about Windows Vista somewhere....

[ceptimus]

I don't like having to run yet another power adapter - not green and the wires look a mess. I think I'll wait until battery powered OLED devices become available.

[Soapy Sam]

Some degree of programmability- even if you do it on a pc and download to the frame's memory- would be good.

And on the memory question- do any accept XD cards?


Looking at prices this year of £115-£190, and as some SVGA equipped laptops are retailing (new) for sub £400 and half that second hand, there seems a case for using an old laptop instead. 1000 pics at 1024 X 768 seems more like what's wanted- and you could route the output to a flat screen TV , run at native resolution, for some LARGER images.

[El Greco]

I don't like having to run yet another power adapter - not green and the wires look a mess. I think I'll wait until battery powered OLED devices become available.

Hey, ceptimus is back! Long time, no hear!

[Skeptical Greg]

Some degree of programmability- even if you do it on a pc and download to the frame's memory- would be good.

And on the memory question- do any accept XD cards?
.............
The one I linked to above accepts XD as well as a couple of others ..

http://www.amazon.com/Coby-DP-102-Widescreen-Digital-Built/dp/B000MFG44Y/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1198967628&sr=1-1

Mine arrived the other day, and I am really impressed with the look and performance.. Working great for me..

[Kopji]

Bah, I got a tech support call from my dad the other day. He wants to add some of his own photos.

[a_unique_person]

Bah, I got a tech support call from my dad the other day. He wants to add some of his own photos.

Just makin' a rod for your own back....

[Skeptical Greg]

Bah, I got a tech support call from my dad the other day. He wants to add some of his own photos.

How did it go ?

Does your dad have the resources to do it himself, or did you have to do it for him ?