I know nothing about digital photo frames (except that it’s hard not to type phrame). Mrs. Dvl just decided that we should get one for Mrs. Dvl-in-law. Today.
Oooookay. Being the technology buyer of the house/office, it’s up to me. I know to hit Newegg and B&H, but don’t know much beyond that — we’re looking for a desk-sized frame (so 7–8"), and one with a CF reader would be best. Any significant difference between the brands? Any bells and whistles I should look for?
Thanks~
Rhythm
A few months ago I researched them on cnet.com and they seemed to rate Kodak pretty highly, so I got one (8" IIRC) for lobotomymom for Christmas.
I was a little disappointed with it. Maybe I expect too much. I had a 4Gb card with about 2500 images on it and when starting the frame, it took 2-3 minutes to ready itself. Navigating could be cantankerous…shutting it off was a PITA at times, like it was in mid-cycle of something and wouldn’t let go.
I also tried making a folder with ALL the pictures in it…that way if you selected that folder, it would play all of them without having to navigate at all. Uh-uh, it wasn’t going to handle that many.
One good thing is that my mom didn’t want to hang hers on the wall b/c she doesn’t want the nail holes etc. Well, if you’re going to hang it, make SURE you get one with a remote. As far as this Kodak went, you would have had to take it down to reach the power switch. But, you’d also have to figure a way to conceal the power cord or let it hang there on the wall, so I don’t know.
I noticed at the store they’re also going to various aspect ratios that imitate the new TV broadcast std. I guess the latest digital cams will make videos in same so that you can watch them on your newer TVs. We just have such a backlog of photos going back before the year 1900 that the “old” aspect ratio seemed smarter to me.
Definitely pay attention to the frame’s aspect ratio. A lot of digital picture frames are coming out with “widescreen” aspect ratios similar to that of an HDTV set. The problem with those is that cameras don’t take pictures using that aspect ratio; they use either a 4:3 ratio (point and shoots and Olympus DSLRs) or a 3:2 ratio (most other DSLRs). The widescreen frames will chop off the top and bottom of your pictures; you may have to crop the photos in a photoediting program first in order to get them to display properly. Look for frames that use a 4:3 or 3:2 aspect ratio if you don’t want to do a lot of photoediting but just want to pop the card from your camera into the frame and have it play as is.
A small but significant percentage of them are just plain defective from the get-go.
I do non-microsoft tech support and I’ve had a couple of calls from people trying to set these things up. One person had two of them and got one of them set up without difficulty, but was having a devil of a time with the second. After working with her a bit, I could only conclude that it was defective and that she needed to return it.
So if you’re messing with it and IT JUST WON’T WORK, don’t beat yourself up too much, just take it back to the store.
When I was researching them last Christmas as a gift, I came to the conclusion that they all suck, even the name-brand and expensive ones. Every electronics company that does anything with boards and screens has made one, and they all have bad menus, bad display and the wrong aspect ratio.
After deciding all of that, I was more at peace with my decision of which to buy and was not too terribly disappointed when it had bad menus, bad display and the wrong aspect ratio. Because I expected it.
IMHO if you spend over $100 you’ll get a much better product, but then you will be pissed at having spent over $100 for a digital photo frame.
Thanks all!
FIL has an Olympus DSLR, so that makes aspect ratio clear.
I noticed a weird price jump – many in the $30-50 range, then up over a hundred (not exclusive, but a general pattern I noticed). What makes the $100+ ones “much better”?
Wow. A remote control. I didn’t even think to look for one; that would be very convenient.
I bought an 8" frame at a post-Christmas clearance, so I wasn’t really thinking about features. It’s pretty good. The pluses:[ul][li]accepts many types of memory cards[/li][li]has a socket on the bottom that fits a camera tripod, which I’m using. The wall is too far away and its built-in stand held it at an angle I didn’t like.[/li][li]fairly easy to use the menus[/li][/ul]
What I don’t like is that it doesn’t respect folder structure; it’s “all photos” or nothing. Also, it doesn’t scale pictures in what I consider an “ideal” way. (There are many algorithms out there). Just yesterday I got around to batch-processing my photos to resize them to a maximum of 800x600 pixels. This also dropped them from their huge camera-defined sizes down to much more manageable sizes.
I noticed that too when I was shopping. I don’t know what makes them much better but they seemed to get better reviews from folks on Amazon. I would suspect they are at least easier to use.
I bought this Viewsonic frame. It has touch controls and was very easy to use. It also uses a 4:3 aspect ratio, instead of the 3:2 that all the Kodaks seem to use. And it looks good.
Like groo I manually resized the photos to 800x600, mainly to fit as many as I could on my 32mb memory card.
Some of the ones from China come pre-loaded with computer viruses.
I bought one by mistake (on sale) that didn’t have an internal memory. It would only play from a memory device, and you couldn’t load it up. I’d try to avoid that mistake in the future. (Best Buy took it back and sold me the more expensive one)
I bought one as a Christmas present for my mother 3-4 years ago.
It was a Philips 7FF1AW/05. Granted it’s not got the best reviews out there, but it does what she needs.
It shows a few dozen pics of family and local scenes, that change randomly. It shows them clearly, but not so brightly that it constantly nags at your attention. And you can set it to turn on and off at certain times, and to adjust it’s brightness according to the time of day.
You can get ones that handle pictures, mp3 and movie files. Some can be connected to your home wifi network. Then you could consider memory size and battery life. All of which adds to the price. And most of which is pointless (for most users).
You need to know how much use your m-i-l will make of it. Is she going to be constantly adding more pictures to it, or will she leave that for you to do every now and then. If (as with my mother) it’s the latter, then just get the one with the highest quality display in your price range. She wont want sounds coming out of it every half-hour, and it will probably sit on a table near a wall socket, so battery life isn’t a consideration.
The best thing to do is is to bung a sample of the images onto a memory card, and head to your nearest suppliers. Ask them to demonstrate uploading and sorting the pics and have a look at the result.
We’re thinking of putting our house on the market this spring, and thought of getting a frame to show pics of what out house and gardens look like through the seasons. I guess $100 is an inconsequential price with respect to a house sale, but we aren’t really interested in spending any more than necessary, and doubt we will have any use for this after the sale.
I would greatly appreciate any specific suggestions/links as to frames to consider/avoid.
Thanks.
What a fantastic idea! We’re in the same boat in considering selling, and with an acre of perennial gardens the more visuals the better! If things work out, where do we send the commission check?
I ended up going with the ViewSonic DPG807BK 8" 800 x 600 at NewEgg ($90), based on resolution, aspect ratio, and brand and general recommendations here. It’s for her office, so the calendar/reminders may be helpful (maybe).
Well, you’ve already bought yours, but the ones I gave as Christmas presents also had built in timers so that they would come on when you woke up/got to work, etc. and turned off when you went to bed. They also play music (you upload) if you want to set up a montage. They hold 4000 pictures in it’s internal memory and come with a remote and after rebate I paid $69.99. We’ve been thrilled. I can check the brand and style if any one is interested.