Experience with photo frames

[psmart]

Does anyone have recommendations for digital photo frames? There's a lot on the market, but very few reviews or solid information to go by. Good, bad, or otherwise, any experiences would be helpful.

Naturally, I will be using the frame only to display outdoor photos

Thanks.

 

[CrisisBill]

I bought my wife one for X-Mas since she kept asking me to print some photos for her but could not decide on what she wanted. I picked up a Westinghouse model and it works great! I put tons of pictures on a jump drive and and it works great.
Get one that uses different media, the Westinghouse takes five types of photo mem cards plus it has a USB port so you can use a jump drive if you want.
There are so many makers out there you have many choices, the only one I did not care for was the Kodak, I thought the pictures looked soft and the colors poor.

 

[Edelweiss]

I received a Brookstone digital picture frame as a gift. It accepts a variety of memory devices plus USB connection. The colors of the displayed images are true to the original digital photos.

 

[forestgnome]

Do any of these play cds? How can I make an album of pictures to display if not?

Thanks

 

[bikehikeskifish]

They take a USB thumb drive / flash drive or the camera memory card. A CD would take a lot of space and the optical reader / laser assembly is costly, bulky and uses a lot of power. A 2-4Gb thumb drive / SD card is like $10-$30 and uses almost no power.

Tim

 

[Edelweiss]

I can upload digital photos directly from my computer using "My Life" software which comes with the picture frame. Memory is limited, however. I can upload 26 high quality, full-size pics, delete and add new photos when I choose. I can enjoy the photos in multi-photo or single-photo slideshow modes.

 

[psmart]

I can upload 26 high quality, full-size pics, delete and add new photos when I choose.

The resolution of most frames is something less than 1 MegaPixel. (They typically range from 640x480 to 1024x768.) So you can substantially increase the storage capacity by resampling the images before loading them into the frame. For example, converting 8MP images to 1MP will increase the number of images the frame can hold about 8 times. (plus or minus, depending on the compression settings.)

The speed of the frame also tends to improve with smaller files. And display quality can improve significantly, since the frame's built-in resampling algorithm is often less sophisticated than current photo-editing software.

 

[Davehiker]

My frame (I gave it to my wife for Christmas) is from "Pandigital" with a small picture. It cost ~$80-$90. I think the image size is too small, and the pictures don't look great in it. The good thing is that it has internal memory, and accepts SD, XD, and CF cards as well as a USB zip drive. I found that if I shrink the files to the resolution of the frame, the way psmart suggests, I can fit a ton of them on the internal memory.

She likes it, so that's all that counts, right?

 

[kmorgan]

Watch out for the digital frames. Just read an article that reported some frames sold by Best Buy were shipped infected with a virus!

Kevin

 

[Halite]

David Pogue did a review of some of the frames in The New York Times today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/technology/personaltech/07pogue.html?_r=1&oref=slogin