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March 29, 2007
[ THE DIGITAL FRAME-UP ]
FROM TIME TO TIME a new type of gadget turns up in the shops and you say “Nah. No one’s going to buy that.” (Imaging is famous for having said that about the first mobile phone he saw. Now, six mobile phones later…)
When we saw the first digital picture frames we had the feeling that this was a doodad going nowhere. They are so expensive. They just sit there flicking through your pictures. What possible application can they have?
An email came from Richard who suggested that we should look into digital frames because he had found a use for them. His mother lives in New Zealand and what better way to keep her up to date on the progress of her grandchildren than with regular batches of photos on memory cards to insert into the frame?
Richard writes: “For what it's worth my Mum is 77 and is very anti technology. She has a TV and that is it…We have tried to buy her a DVD player so I can send photo slide shows on DVD but there is always a firm no.
“The photo frame application is so simple that even she will use it especially if it comes pre-loaded with 150 grandchildren photos.”
Then a retailer tells us that these things sold in such quantities before Christmas that the demand far exceeded the available supply. It was time to have a look.
We expected that the different brands would all come from the same factory in China and would all be similar. Wrong again.
The Philips 7FF1 has a 14x9cm screen with 720x540 pixels and 133ppi resolution. Images are bright and sharp, inclining to contrast that is too high. There are limited brightness adjustments but the best way to get good results from this frame is to prepare the images specially for the application. Photos can be loaded from memory cards or direct from the computer.
Controls are user-hostile and the user’s manual is on disc. And the instructions are in Chinglish and in at least one case positively misleading.
The lithium battery will power the frame for about 50 minutes. The picture surround strip comes in different colours and sticks to the frame magnetically. Black is best.
In spite of the few problems we had we like the little Philips frame. With careful preparation and adjustment the image quality is excellent.
We also looked at the Digital Frame Australia BluView unit which has a slightly smaller screen than the Philips with a 960x234 pixel array. The resolution is not as fine as the Philips and on close inspection the BluView looks like a miniature LCD television with relatively coarse pixel size and pitch while the 7FF1 looks like a section from a quality LCD laptop screen.
The BluView has a printed manual but the information is compressed to the point of incomprehensibility.
The BluView has more inputs, including Bluetooth, as the name suggests. It also has a remote control (it took two people 20 minutes to work out how to get the battery compartment open) and audio reproduction.
While the colour reproduction on the Philips is cold on the BluView it is warm.
Our suggestion is to take some photos on a memory card into the shop and try them out before deciding which to buy.
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Posted by terry at March 29, 2007 12:46 AM
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