The Best Digital Photo Frame (Review)
Current Digital Photo Frame Deals:
- Overstock - $8 off InVion DPF-8P106-IUS 8-inch Digital Photo Frame, only $69.99 Posted on 7/1/09 and Expires on 7/13/09
I still own one of the world’s first digital picture frames - the Kodak Smart Picture Frame. It’s still displaying pictures on the stand near my office door. Problem is: it’s not terribly convenient to update (as it once relied on a dial-up connection to the Internet and a monthly digital photo service). It still works, as the last firmware update allowed you to show JPGs (640×480) through the CompactFlash media slot. For years, I’ve been hoping to upgrade to a newer frame… but all of those digital photo frames have fallen short, in my opinion. Until now.
I received this notice the other day:
Digital Spectrum Solutions Inc. announced today that its new wireless MemoryFrame 8104 Premium is now available. This next-generation digital-picture frame is capable of sharing content over the Internet and integrates easily with home media servers. It integrates the new multimedia features of Microsoft Windows Vista and fully supports capabilities such as Windows Media Connect and Windows Connect Now. It also fully supports the features and capabilities of Windows XP used in conjunction with Windows Media Player 11.
Blah, blah, blah… I’ve seen this kind of thing before, and there’s always a caveat. Still, I was hoping for the best, and was pleasantly surprised with the extensive list of features:
- Built-in multi format card reader
- Embedded 802.11b/g wireless connectivity
- Web enabled for photo sharing
- Plays MP3, WMA audio files
- Plays WMV video files
- Built-in stereo speakers
- USB to thumb drive, camera, etc.
- Remote control for convenient use
- Landscape or portrait orientation
- 10.4″ screen
The best part? No subscription required!!! That was the clincher for me. It’s what held me back from buying or recommending anything from Ceiva. Why lock yourself and your family into endlessly (needlessly) expensive subscription services for digital photo frames!? With Digital Spectrum Solutions, when you get the MF-8104 (”Vista Frame”) - everything’s yours forever. No hidden fees. No hidden costs. Wicked!
I couldn’t wait to get my geeky hands on it, knowing full well that if it worked, I’d likely pick one up for my parents and family - so that we could share photos back and forth through our respective Flickr accounts.
It arrived yesterday, and I did a live unboxing with my audience watching and asking tons of questions about the digital frame. What could have taken a few minutes took a bit longer, as I was exploring every aspect of the frame. This unit (literally) has just about everything you could ever want in a digital picture frame - and I’m hoping they’ll deliver software updates with frequency, keeping its feature set fresh.
If I had to assign a letter grade to it, I’d say B+ (and you must understand that every other digital photo frame on the market today is lucky to score a C- with me). I have no qualms in recommending the frame, but with extreme caveats with its current software revision:
- Couldn’t connect to my 802.11g router (even though the digital photo frame supports the wireless protocol with TKIP encryption). I tried before installing updates on the frame, so… that may be different now.
- There’s no way of toggling the dots in a password entry screen to show the characters - which is a challenge when you’re trying to enter long strings of text. Not a bug, but a bit inconvenient as there was no way to tell whether I was making key typos.
- Diagnostic information is non-existent. If something wrong happened, I wasn’t told enough about the error or mistake. It couldn’t connect to my “G” router, but why? It couldn’t tell me if I did something wrong, or if something else was awry.
- Software updates can’t be configured to happen automatically, it seems - which is fine, but they should recognize that most people won’t touch the frame again once it’s set up (especially with Internet connectivity enabled). Moreover, it prompted me to power down after an update instead of just rebooting on its own (and telling me that it would beforehand). Then, it installed the updates - but didn’t bother to tell me what updates were installed, what bugs had been fixed, or what was new? I was completely in the dark, which is “user friendly” - but it’s also very troubleshooting unfriendly.
- It took me a while to figure out how Flickr integration worked. If you don’t enter your user ID in the settings panel before trying to play a Flickr slide show, it will give you an error (without prompting you for the requested information).
- You can only browse one person’s Flickr (or Webshots, etc.) photo ID at a time - which is a tremendous shortcoming, and is what is largely keeping me from giving this product an A. They assume that only one person would use this frame, or that only one account would be needed. However, they’re missing the entire point of having an Internet-enabled frame. Let me control what I want to see, and from where. As it stands, there’s no way for you to subscribe to a global tag or search term. Hopefully, they’ll fix that part soon.
- The frame can render JPGs and MP3s, yet… I can’t actually subscribe to a podcast feed. This baffles me, as it’s the entire reason to have an Internet-enabled device. They’re vendor-locking into photo verticals, but what about my Zooomr feed? Photos non grata on the frame for now. That it doesn’t support RSS (text, enclosures, etc.) is another minor disappointment. Hopefully, it will soon.
- I can only view photos from one ID at a time - not my Flickr friends, not two Flickr accounts interspersed, etc. That was frustrating to me - as I expected that feature to be there. They have full control over software updates, so it must be a matter of time before they figure out that the killer feature isn’t just seeing your own photos - but everyone else’s (which is the beauty of global tags).
- There’s no telling how often the frame pulls updates from my Flickr account.
- They increased the size of the font in the last software update, which looked better (for the most part), but some screens weren’t designed properly for a larger font - as it spilled over in places where it wouldn’t have were the typeface a bit smaller. This isn’t really an issue, but I’m guessing it’ll be fixed with the next update (although, I really don’t wanna manually check my frame for updates every day - it should have a setting in there to do it for me, especially when it’s already online).
If they could nail down these oversights, I’d be thrilled.
It still receives my full recommendation, as there’s nothing out there that’s even close (in terms of quality and featuers). It’s a Best in Class, and I hope it only gets better with further revisions. Until they fix the Flickr “bug,” I’ve had to set up another Flickr account where my friends can email photos to - then they’ll be able to see photos on the frame sitting on my desk within minutes. I’ll share that information in the live chat room (Twitter, Jaiku, etc.) for those who care.
The price is quite reasonable (and competitive) at $349 - again, with NO subscription fees. You could likely build your own digital photo frame, but it wouldn’t look half as nice it would likely cost you just as much in parts and labor. I paid that much for my Kodak digital photo frame over five years ago… I’m glad to finally have something better sitting on my desk. When the “hack” Flickr account is approved, I’ll set it out for you to see.
Private Domain Registration from GoDaddy is a smart thing to do. When you register a domain, your contact information is immediately made available to anyone who wants to see it. Plus, as a listener of The Chris Pirillo Show, enter code CHRIS3 and get your .COM domain name for just $6.95 a year. Get your piece of the internet at GoDaddy!
20 Comments
The Chris Pirillo Show
May 27th, 2007
at 11:21am
[IMG] Chris Pirillo The Best Digital Photo Frame (Review) Cell Phone Plans and SMS What?s Missing in an Operating System? Video Tutorials Student Loan Debt Student Loan Solutions Which is Faster: USB or FireWire? Coin Collecting: Mad Money or Pennies?
Hong Xiaowan’s Studio
May 27th, 2007
at 8:31pm
The Best Digital Photo Frame (Review)
Audio Video Help
May 28th, 2007
at 12:10am
http://live.pirillo.com/ - Chris got to play around with a pretty cool piece of tech: the Vista Frame by Digital Spectrum. And according to Chris, this is what a digital Photo Frame should be. In fact, Chris calls it the best digital photo frame. That’s high praise coming from a technology pundit. The Vista Frame comes with: Built-in multi format card readerEmbedded 802.11b/g wireless connectivityWeb enabled for photo sharingPlays MP3, WMA audio files
Pirillovision
May 28th, 2007
at 12:10am
http://live.pirillo.com/ - Chris got to play around with a pretty cool piece of tech: the Vista Frame by Digital Spectrum. And according to Chris, this is what a digital Photo Frame should be. In fact, Chris calls it the best digital photo frame. That’s high praise coming from a technology pundit. The Vista Frame comes with: Built-in multi format card reader Embedded 802.11b/g wireless connectivity Web enabled for photo sharing Plays MP3, WMA audio files
Glen
May 29th, 2007
at 9:50am
This sounds like what I am looking for, a frame I can put up at my parents place and upload new pictures of the grandkids to when I want. I have been looking for a networkable frame, and was even willing to try one that was ethernet only, but wireless is a big plus!
Not sure about the internet capability, although in the end it would probably be a lot simpler than remote controlling my moms PC and uploading pictures to the frame that way.
Sam Costello
May 30th, 2007
at 8:44am
Great review/walkthrough, Chris! Very informative. I’d love to get my hands on one of these to try it out.
Digital Media Thoughts - Digital Media News & Views
June 5th, 2007
at 10:21pm
Best Digital Photo Frame Ever?
rikia
June 11th, 2007
at 1:45am
I liked your review of the digital picture frame and went to purchase it on line. There are two wireless models, one discounted. Do you have an opinion of the cheaper MF 810W?
Thanks,
Rikia
Brent
August 4th, 2007
at 6:03pm
Chris,
I’m still pretty partial to diy frames. It takes a little more work, but It’s cheaper and can do anything you want it to including flickr syncing. i think its worth the extra work for those that aren’t afraid of a little hardware hacking. The one I made is here:
http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2007/05/converting-old-laptop-into-digital.html
A whole website of them with photos and how-to’s are here:
http://diydigitalframes.blogspot.com/
I think the for-purchase ones like the one you are talking about are catching up though. Looks pretty good for the price.
Brent
Cheaha
September 14th, 2007
at 8:16pm
Chris, your comment about not being able to do multiple accounts…well do what I did. Create a new Flickr account and create contacts for all the media you want. Then just sync the frame with that account and not your own. As you need to change it you just change that account.
tomg
November 22nd, 2007
at 10:26pm
I just purchased a frame at Sams Club that “shares photos wirelessly over the internet” (IDS1500). It does this with a WiFi dongle (included) to your Access Point (WEP or WPA) and gives you the choice of using Yahoo or Google photo services (I couldn’t get the Yahoo service to work, but the Google works just fine). The photos don’t get saved on the frame, they are accessed in real time. The software on the frame is accessed through a bunch of menus…no way to update the SW I can see…it works now, but I wonder what happens when Yahoo/Google change something about their protocol and the frame can’t communicate with the service anymore? I can see why Ceiva works as well as it does. In any case, the frame has card slots that work just fine. This is a 15″ frame for $300. It seems to work just fine (on Google). I’ve looked at a number of these internet frames since my Ceiva accounts expired a couple of months ago. Each one has some “gotchas” (like the Kodak frame that won’t show full frame because the Kodak photo storage WEB site doesn’t save photos at a high enough resolution). It looks like the beginning of the end for subscriptions! bye, tomg
stu
November 29th, 2007
at 2:20pm
I purchased the 15″ IDS wireless pic frame at Sam’s Club which supports Flickr and Google. The big issue I’m having is that the frame displays a list of tags from flickr that correspond to the tags assigned to your photos. However, when you choose a tag, the frame proceeds to display a maximum of 20 photos and then repeats the same 20 photos indefinitely. I think this may be because each tag is an RSS feed and flickr only provides links to the most recent 20 photos in a RSS feed. I’d like the frame to sequence through all my photos, not just the most recent 20. Any ideas?
James
December 2nd, 2007
at 12:24pm
Any advice on getting reviews on basic digital frames, that is, the best available without all the extra bells and whistles my technology challenged family can’t handle? Simply put in Flash card and play type?
Don Knott
December 7th, 2007
at 4:51pm
How do you get the frame to work with Flickr? I setup my useraccount ID under the settings for photo sharing but when I go to load the slideshow it gives an error that it couldn’t login. I didn’t see a section under the the flickr id in settings for a password. Did I miss something obvious?
I’ve only gotten it to work with using the RSS feed.
Sid
December 9th, 2007
at 5:53pm
Hi
I am looking for a basic frame where I can just stick in a USB drive, load some pictures (jpeg files, etc) and view them in a slide show (without the USB drive / memory card sticking in). So, I dont need Internet synching. Is there a simple frame that does this well?
John
January 23rd, 2008
at 10:03am
The frame may have many capabilities, but the User Manual is very disorganized and virtually incomprehensible, so I have found it impossible to get the frame working, and the Customer Support at Digital Spectrum has not responded to my several requests (email; no phone support) for assistance. What to do?
John
January 23rd, 2008
at 10:09am
Sid, I got the Brookstone photo frame for Christmas. This has none of the advanced features of the Memory Frame and the screen is slightly smaller, but it couldn’t be simpler to set up and get running. One short, clear page of instructions in the well-organized user manual was all I needed. It took no more than 15 minutes to figure out how to connect to my PC and download a bunch of photos. Click one button on top of the frame and you’re off and running.
Camcorder and CD player review
April 23rd, 2008
at 4:18am
source:The Best Digital Photo Frame (Review), Chris Pirillo Not exactly what I was looking for, but still a excellent read.
Digital Picture Frame ~ Chris Pirillo
May 26th, 2008
at 9:45pm
[...] And according to Chris, this is what a digital Photo Frame should be. In fact, Chris calls it the best digital photo frame. That’s high praise coming from a technology pundit. An exciting addition to any home, the [...]
rcbowman
December 5th, 2008
at 1:46pm
But…
The one thing Ceiva and (once upon a time) Kodak did, and the sole and exclusive reason I can see for getting a digital picture frame at all, is connect to the internet and download pictures *by themselves*. The whole point was (and the only reason I want such a frame is) to give it to grandma, who wants to see pix from kids and grandkids, and who absolutely will not get or use a computer, let alone set up an internet connection.
What is needed is a version of the Ceiva and Kodak which will connect to the internet via a local access number, for LESS than the cost of dialup internet access (since it need only connect for a few minutes a day, and can be set to do so late at night, like the Kodak and Ceiva), but which will then download from any website, flickr or whatever, to avoid the feeds. It’s a tragedy that Kodak didn’t support their product. Compuserv or AOL or someone like that (with universal local access dialup numbers) should have jumped in and set up this sort of option. I can’t see why no one has bothered.
But as is, these photo frames which just use an existing internet connection through a computer or router, are totally useless for the sole purpose I’ve ever seen for the frames. If you already have internet access set up in your house, why on earth would you need a limited doodad in addition to your computer to look at pix at a lower resolution?