Digital picture frames - suggestions?

[Otto]

Anybody got any suggestions for digital picture frames? I want to give one to my parents for Xmas.

What I'd like:
- Not backlit, but highly visible.
- Both plug in and battery powered capabilities.
- No visible controls, although having a forward/back control perhaps on the back of the unit would be nice.
- It'd be nice to find one with (wireless) network connectivity so I could hook it up to someplace and then be able to change their pictures remotely (they're always asking to see my latest pics, if I could just have them up somewhere and let them see them all the time, that would be cool). All the network capable ones I've found require subscriptions to some damn service, which sucks.
- Decent size. Doesn't have to be huge, but 6 inches wide or so would be good.

[mercurial]

Heh.. I'm looking for one for my folks as well. Though my requirements are a bit different $100 or less, takes flash or SDC, and simple. Don't care for network or how it's powered or backlit.

[Otto]

mercurial: If that's all you're looking for, Amazon had them on sale yesterday. Might still have some there today: Linky (http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUT F8%26rh%3Dn%253A172282%252Cn%253A502394%252Cn%253A 172435%252Cn%253A525460%26page%3D1&tag=ottodestruct-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325)

A lot of those probably fit your needs. The networked part is the hard one for mine.

[mercurial]

Yeah. The only networked ones I've found in the past were the ones tied to some sort of monthly service fee to "push" the pictures down.

[pgogborn]

It is an old article but the following claims the "The PV1900 requires no monthly subscription" >
http://www.photovu.com/news040602.html

[Marc]

This one (http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/cameras/7edc/) at ThinkGeek is WiFi-enabled and can receive photos via an RSS feed or from a POP3 (aka Gmail) mailbox. It does require an AC adapter, though.

[Otto]

This one (http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/cameras/7edc/) at ThinkGeek is WiFi-enabled and can receive photos via an RSS feed or from a POP3 (aka Gmail) mailbox. It does require an AC adapter, though.
Now *that* is freakin' awesome. Bit pricey, and out of stock, but still, awesome. I want one. Two.

[pgogborn]

The fetching from a Flickr RSS feed is definitely an extra Wow! factor.

If you are still specing out a cell-phone with a good camera have you checked out ZoneTag (http://zonetag.research.yahoo.com/)? - one click to take the photo, another to upload it to Flickr.

(and if you have got Bluetooth GPS it will add latitude, longitude, speed and direction tags to the Flickr page)

[Ludwig van Jaethoven]

Now *that* is freakin' awesome. Bit pricey, and out of stock, but still, awesome. I want one. Two.

Not really out of stock, looks like it just hasn't been released yet.

Shipping Details:
Dear Wi-Fi Geeks, the eStarling will be released in early December. For backorders placed now, your order will ship on or before December 19th. If you would like to receive the eStarling before Christmas, please choose 2 day shipping or faster at checkout.

I'm curious what the 1st time setup is all about, and why it requires a PC. Requiring a PC sucks, but is understandable. I just don't understand what you'd need in order to set it up at all. Network settings? Does that require an OS specific setup?

I really wish I could find my gift certificate for ThinkGeek. It wouldn't help much, but I've really wanted a network capable, subscriptionless digiframe as well.

[Marc]

I'm curious what the 1st time setup is all about, and why it requires a PC. Requiring a PC sucks, but is understandable. I just don't understand what you'd need in order to set it up at all. Network settings? Does that require an OS specific setup?
I'm sure it's so that you can configure its wireless settings. I doubt it's PC-specific, but I bet the instructions are. :)

[Pendragn]

Now that is a cool picture frame. I have no need for one, but I may have to come up with one just for that.

tk

[Lori]

I decided to wait for next year for one for my mom. The really cool ones still blew my christmas budget, and the less than cool ones were, well, less than cool. :)

[Marc]

At the last minute, we decided to get a digital picture frame as a gift. I was surprised to find that they must be very popular since many places have sold out of them.

[Gai-jin]

the less than cool ones were, well, less than cool. :)

I know what you mean. My co-worker ordered one from buy.com for about $100. He said it was advertised as having a 9" screen, but the only way that's true is if they measured all the way around the screen instead of diagonal! The screen was a bit smaller than a playing card, IIRC. On top of that, the frame would only read pictures which had been named in AAAA9999.jpg format, and wouldn't read pictures that were saved in somephoto software. (Apparently picasa and others save headers with the photo that the frame didn't like.)

[Michael]

I am picturing (<--Not Sparkle :) ) a time when digital frames will be 15 - 20 dollars. How cool would that be?

[Combat Medic]

BTW, I'm reading bad reviews about that network enabled frame. It seems to have a really weird and really low resolution.

[Ludwig van Jaethoven]

BTW, I'm reading bad reviews about that network enabled frame. It seems to have a really weird and really low resolution.

I wasn't going to be getting one anyways, due to the price- but did you come across anything network enabled getting good reviews?

[Man In Black]

You could just get down and dirty and take apart a LCD you aren't using anymore, do some hacking and stuff, and make your own ;)

[nataylor]

So I ordered one of those eStarling frames. The feature set appeared to be just what I wanted. I got it yesterday and I'm both impressed and let down.

First, it's not that good looking. There's a big logo on the front of the frame, and the WiFi adapter sticks out the top. I can deal with that, though. It's just sitting on my desk at work, so I don't mind if it looks to "computery."

Setting it up was simple. But it does require a PC. You plug it in, then hook it up via USB to the computer. There's a config utility on the CD that comes with it that sets up the wireless stuff and transfers the settings to the frame. There's no way around the need for the PC. The frame won't do anything, even play images off a flash card, until this setup is complete. Oh, and I got a notice from Think Geek that there was some mess up in what power adapter got shipped with the unit and that as a result, the wireless range is only a few feet. They're sending out replacement power adapters to fix this problem, though.

So I get it all set up (and have to sit it right next to my wireless access point due to the reduced range). I log in to the web site where you manage the frame. It was exceedingly easy to set it up to pull images from my wife's and my own Flickr accounts (via RSS). I also gave it a Gmail account to pull stuff from. You also get an email account @estarling.net that you can use to send images to. It checks the RSS feeds once an hour, Gmail once every 12 hours, and emails sent to the @estarling.net address are near immediate. You can also upload photos via the web page, and that is near immediate, too.

The pictures look OK on the screen. Yes, it's low resolution, but if you're sitting a few feet away, it still looks decent. Also, the screen is 16:9, so most pictures are going to leave black bars on the side. Again, that doesn't bug me at all, but it might be a concern to some people.

The big letdown is that it appears to lock up quite frequently. This requires pulling the power cord several times until it starts working again. I hope there is some mechanism for updating the firmware to fix this problem.

In summary, the feature set is great. If the resolution of the screen was a little higher, and it was 4:3, and the frame wasn't so ugly, this would be the perfect digital frame. I at least hope that this pushes other manufactures to include the features this frame has.