Digital Photo Frames

[Codebreaker]

If anyone has bought a Digital Photo Frame recently I'd be interested to hear you views on it.

I've just bought one for my parents and loaded it with pictures of our Grandaughter.

There seem many to choose from range from about £30 to £150 and being a cheap skate I went for a £40 version. It's a Chinee No Namee version.

7" screen, 16:9 aspect ratio and a massive 480 x 234 resolution. Actually the resolution doesn't match the aspect ratio, so a little creativity on someones part and I've yet to determine what the actual resolution is.

It also plays MP3 and AVI files.

The display quality is a little lacking. There is control for Brightness/Contrast and Colour as well as some standard Vivid/Cool/Standard. Even so I've tweaked away and only get so-so results. The colour range is limited and clipping of highlights occurs early, so the gamma is a little odd!!!

Viewing angle is very limited.

You can change the timing of each slide and also the fade between them.

The unit comes with a remote control which seems to lack a basic Play button - you know the one with the Right Facing Arrow. Turns out the Pause key ( II) will act as Play as well.

Takes CF, SD/MMC/MS cards and has a USB interface for downloading. I resized all my images to match the screen size and chose sRGB as the Colour Space. The images didn't seem to fit very well on screen. There are options to Fill/Auto Fit/Pan and Scan. I haven't quite figured out what these mean as the results don't seem to line up with the description.

Manual is only in English, suprisingly, as most things I get tend to have manuals made from half a rain forest, since they're in 30 different languages.

If anyone has good results from one of these I'd be interested to know the brand - if any.

Colin

[msbrad]

Hi Colin,
Although I do not recall off the top of my head the brand we purchased of the digital photo frame (bought 4, used as gifts), the res./ ratio/screen size are the same. It was a "never heard of" brand too.
I've not been overly pleased either.color is fine, but I just cannot get the photo sized "right" to look normal in the viewing area.
There was another thread back around Christmas time that dealt with that.
m

[Codebreaker]

I guess we're spoilt by having good monitors to see our images on. My parents wont know any difference and I'm sure they'll be delighted anyway.

I'm likely to by some more but I'll try another brand next time. Mind you it could be worse. Some people who reviewed the one I bought thought they were the bees knees!!! :confused:

Colin

[lowbone]

I bought a kodak frame and returned it. Everyone had a blueish skin cast. I think these things need a little R&D before they are ready for serious photographers

[Wendy]

Hi ...

I have been considering one for a while ... but I'm just a little dubious about the quality of them at the moment :(

Wendy

[TonyW]

Me too - there are some reasonable but pricey ones out there I think but until I see one that does better than my Philips portable DVD player (that plays JPEGS) I was holding off. I've seen some that are pretty bad - seems a shame to put my pictures onto a 320x234 resolution screen that a lot of the cheap ones I looked at seemed to be. I'm holding out for 1240x768 for under $200 :)

Tony

[msbrad]

I'm home now. Mine is a mustek PF-A700B
It at least comes in 4 languages.
anyhow, you would think I would have paid attention better after buying one of their large size scanners, a couple of years prior.
m

[Codebreaker]

The screen resolution isn't really an issue - after all my 20" widescreen only has 1650 x 1080, so a 7" screen can have far less and still deliver the same quality.

At the same PPI as my 20" screen a 7" works out to be about approx. 576 x 336

It's the rest of the H/W and S/W that's letting it down.

Colin

[ceejay3744]

I bought 3 last year as gifts from Sam's Club. One had a gilded antique looking frame. The other 2 were contemporary frames. My daughter was thrilled with the gilded frame and uses it on her desk at work. She has received many comments. My son wasn't so thrilled with his frame. And I don't even know about the 3rd frame as I've had no feedback.

[Tina_B]

I have one that just sits on the table and I never turn it on. The kids gave it to me for a Christmas gift. My grandkids like to turn it on and watch but soon lose interest in it. It has a card slot that takes most digital cards and is easy to use but I just don't think to turn it on. Maybe if I was not the one with the camera I might enjoy it more. I take all the photos so maybe that is why I don't use it. Just another gadget to go in the closet with all the other gadgets that have been given to me and never used.
Tina B

[Rusty]

Tina and I apparently had the same experience.
My son gave me one for Christmas. I used it once, said, "that's nice" and put it back in the box.

This takes the varity of memory cards used in cameras. Thus, I assume it is designed to appeal to somebody that goes from camera right to viewing.

To my way of thinking, it's pretty cumbersome to copy images from my PC back to a SD Card so I can look at them in a digital viewer.

If you can get one with a USB slot, I believe it would get a lot more use. If I had young children and living parents, I would buy one and mail a new flash drive full of pictures every two or three months.

Rusty