Comments on: What I want in a digital picture frame

By: Joypebble

Joypebble — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:47:24 +0000

My eStarling frame continues to have frame freezing problems that have gone unaddressed by their “Tech Support” in seven different attempts to get some answers from them. Other users apparently have the same difficulty and have had no responses from the eStarling manufacturer.

A photo freezes during continuous play and requires rebooting to re-establish the playback sequencing of images.

The total disregard of the manufacturer can be considered nothing less than in insult to consumer who have purchased this product. I own two which are in different locations running off two different networks and the problem is in both.

Be prepared to be ignored if you purchase this product and require help from the manufacturer.

—JP

By: Phil Walker

Phil Walker — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:48:28 +0000

Hi terry,
I have a great frame…….my Panasonic 42inch plazma TV. It takes an SD card so I have a crop ratio for it in Lightroom and an export preset for the exact pixel dimensions. You can fit hundreds and hundreds of photos on old half gig cards and they look tremendous at 42 inches at 1080p!

By: Bruce Lewis

Bruce Lewis — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:19:17 +0000

Eric, I solved this problem in 2008 on my photo-sharing site http://ourdoings.com/ by creating separate feeds for horizontal and vertical photos. Every so often I flip my Samsung SPF-83V to the other orientation and change the feed to get different pictures.

By: Tom Singer

Tom Singer — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:09:02 +0000

NPR ran a story a while back about some digital frames having viruses to gather your info and send it back to China. That makes me nervous, and makes me wonder what’s on the cheap cards and sticks that are available.

By: Eric Joyner

Eric Joyner — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:23:54 +0000

One thing that will never work for me with digital frames is related to aspect ratio. The value that individually framed images brings to the table is that the image is framed properly to enhance the individual photograph. If it’s a portrait, it’s in the proper ratio, and the same for landscape. Digital frames lose their luster for me when you see a nice frame with landscape photos looking dramatic, and then the portrait comes up and it’s teeny tiny. As such, the only thing that even comes close to real life is an image on a large television screen. But, unless someone makes square frames (which would look odd in general, but would allow for portrait and landscape to effectively be the same size), then the digital options will still not be all that great for my needs.

By: Bruce Mandel

Bruce Mandel — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:22:13 +0000

I don’t get or understand the pricing of these units. I just bought an LG 21″ (widescreen) flat panel lcd monitor for my office computer for $175.00 and it’s beautiful. I keep seeing these (average) 6″ digital frames ranging from $299 to $1000 and the resolution is ususally maxed out at 600 X 400 and included is an ugly frame. It’s beyond me, I’m waiting for them to be 20″ and around $100.00. I gues I might be dreaming, but what the hay!

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:57:35 +0000

Thanks for the (as usual) carefully thought out and presented review.

My wife and I purchased a Kodak EasyShare W820 8-Inch Wireless Digital Frame about a year ago.

It does look good and seems to perform as advertised–except that there is no Mac support. So, for example, while it is a wireless device, you can’t do anything with it on your Mac. You can neither configure it nor copy pictures to/from it.

Every few months I check the Kodak site to see if they’ve added Mac support, but nothing yet.

By: TrevJ

TrevJ — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:36:35 +0000

You may well be right there, Terry. I guess maybe the idea of framed backlit photos (as part of the home decor) just doesn’t work for me. I love viewing nice photography on my 24″ LCD monitor, and think it would look pretty hi-tech hanging on my office wall, but I don’t think I’d want to see it hanging on my living room wall — no matter how you dress it up. I’ll take a nicely framed static print any day.

By: Terry White

Terry White — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:33:30 +0000

TrevJ,
I think it’s very possible. Some have come close on the design side already, but failed on the tech side. I think the problem is that most of the current manufacturers lean strongly towards the technology and don’t think about design. Let’s take simple example. Start with a nice elegant black frame that you can find at just about any store. Give it a nice white matte. Now replace the area where photo would go with an LCD screen and you’re there. That would be a basic design that blows away everything else out there today. You could then get fancier with the frame itself.

By: TrevJ

TrevJ — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:23:45 +0000

Terry,
I too have NEVER seen a photo frame that has impressed me. I think a big reason for that though is that the whole notion of marrying a backlit image with something classy and non-techno really doesn’t work. The mind just doesn’t accept the two — like wearing sneakers with a tux. I think in order for the concept to work, you’ve gotta go all hi-tech. I could someday be proven wrong, of course. Do you think it’s possible for the two to work well together, Terry?

By: Holly

Holly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:54:52 +0000

I can’t wait to check out the models you’ve listed here. Until now, we’ve been using our Playstation3 to stream photos from my iPhoto via MediaLink Helper software. I agree that we have all these big tv’s just sitting around, they should display our photos! I’m amazed television makers haven’t pushed this feature more, it seems like a no-brainer. Many newer models have wifi built in, too.

By: Terry White

Terry White — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:01:02 +0000

Looks good! Great from the technology side for sure and I’ll have to take a closer look at this product. However, from a design standpoint this picture says it all:
http://www.estarling.com/Imagesv2/Gallery/party.jpg
Look at this photo and you’ll see their frame on the wall vs. the prints over to the right. The one on the wall, while very modern looking and nice looks like technology. The ones on the right look like prints/photos. I want a big digital frame on my wall with many of the features I see here, but I want it to look like those frames on the right.

By: Eon

Eon — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:56:53 +0000

Terry, what do you think about the estarling photo frames?
http://www.estarling.com/

By: Larry

Larry — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:10:41 +0000

I would also like to see some good software that would automatically display my photos based on metadata and other criteria. e.g. “show photos of anybody whose birthday is within on week of today.”

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:09:54 +0000

To me the one feature I need before I buy one of these is color profiling. Give me a darn profile or allow me to profile this thing! No sense in displaying pictures of kids and family if their skin looks purple! (ok, not purple but the way I see it on my profiled monitor). Everything else can wait… Oh yes, completely agree about the frame.