Review: Digital Picture Frames

Dec. 6, 2000 -- Images are going high-tech everywhere you look, and bit by bit, picture frames have been getting in on the act.

Whether you snap black-and-white photographs with your 35 mm or zap pictures with your digital camera, electronic picture frames offer a high-tech way to showcase your images. Copping a traditional design, these devices let you display more than an album’s worth of pictures one frame at a time. As long as you have access to a scanner or a digital camera, you can mount your photos in one of these frames and create a virtual slide show of the images you choose.

Getting WiredThe frames come in three basic varieties: devices that interact with the Internet, those that connect to your computer, and standalones. There’s quite a range of how much hands-on activity each type involves. Sony’s expensive Digital Photo Frame is one of the simplest to use: pop the memory stick out of your camera, slip it into the frame, and voila! — there are your pictures.

The others can be just as easy for less money, with the purchase of an extra flash memory card.

In general, the routine for these high-tech frames involves transferring pictures from a digital camera to a computer and then to either a frame or a Web site, or loading scanned photographs to the frame or the Net. Most of the frames need to find a home near an electrical outlet. Several portable frames such as VideoChip Technologies’ $349 Photo Wallet and the $340 Digi-Frame 390 are battery-powered, but their small picture areas make them better suited for the road than for the living room or office.

Making the ConnectionThe cyber frames, which come with a built-in modem, are probably the most user-friendly. Once you’re set up with service, the devices do the work for you.

But required monthly subscription fees that let you upload, store and download pictures online can add up. The fees range anywhere from $50 to $120 a year and cover features from photo editing tools to print services. Expect premium services to cost extra. Unfortunately, there appears to be no cap on what these fees can cost, and if the company goes out of business or stops providing service, you’ll have a very nice frame which won’t be able to display much.

As with all Net appliances, speed counts. Downloads are reliant on the frame’s internal 56K modem, but you can upload pictures to your online digital frame inbox — which comes with the subscription — from any computer with a high-speed connection. Frames that work with your computer allow you to tweak images from the frame itself or through image-editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop or the company’s own software. In general, you transfer pictures through a USB or serial cable that connects the frame to your computer. The products we tested worked on both Macs and PCs. We found the Digi-Frame gave the most bang for its buck, while both the Ceiva and Kodak offered a good gift choice for the less technically inclined.

To give you a better idea of what kinds of frame are on the market, we’ve taken a look at four representative frames and prepared an unscientific review of them below.

Digi-Frame DF-560 The handsome-looking $570 Digi-Frame displays crystal clear images in an active-matrix screen — the only frame we tested that uses the technology that powers most laptop displays and produces clearer images at more viewing angles than its passive-matrix sibling. This Rolls-Royce of frames comes with three decorative faceplates and features a menu wheel and control button that let you design a picture show: you can view thumbnail images of available pictures, pick which ones you’d like to put into a rotation, choose their order, select their shelf-life and set transition effects. The frame automatically adjusts for a horizontal or vertical image.

You can also add special effects to your pictures without changing the original. For instance, you can give photos a retro-look by applying sepia tones or making them black & white. Or you can give images a more arty feel by adding a starlight or Infra-red effect

The frame requires a SmartMedia or Compact Flash memory card, which will set you back another $30 to $120 — depending on how many pictures you want to store. But there are no subscription costs and the add-on can allow you to store up to 500 pictures in your frame — about twice as much as an average 2-inch, 225-photo binder. The memory card also lets you bypass the transfer process.

The Digi-Frame has a one-year warranty.

Ceiva LF-2000 Ceiva’s $249 Internet frame is very user-friendly, even for the low-tech crowd. Once it’s set up, timed downloads put the pictures you’ve chosen into the frame. The mostly classy-looking black frame has an unfortunately prominent company logo scrawled across its front. Its otherwise simple elegance of style is reflected in a straightforward, two-button design: one adjusts picture brightness; the other controls the slideshow and manually download pictures.

This cyber frame has the largest screen of the models we tested, but it can only display horizontal images.

You can manually connect to the Ceiva network to upload, store and arrange up to 1,000 pictures. You can choose up to 20 images from your online albums and your inbox, where friends and family can send you images, for a single slide show.

Normally, the frame automatically loads images into it during early morning hours, so as not to tie up your phone line when you’re awake. The frame requires a pre-existing Net connection and a yearlong committment for the Ceiva service. Introductory subscription rates begin at $50 a year, with $80/year rates kicking in after the first 12 months. Prepaying can save you money, the company says.

Ceiva has announced some local channels to include Internet content such as local weather, comics, horoscope, lottery results and image sites that provide daily pictures for download. The company is also on the verge of providing print services for pictures on its network as well as a host of other new services.

The Ceiva has a 90-day warranty.

Kodak Smart Picture FrameThe $300 Kodak cyber frame has real oak wood surrounding its LCD screen. Falling in the middle of the pack for picture size, clarity, features, and functionality, the frame combines many online features with Flash memory card ones: it can use the Net to transfer pictures into its memory, or it can take advantage of SmartCard flash memory to load and view images.

Many of the Smart Frame’s features are accessible from control buttons directly on the frame. And all of the setup features are menu-driven — from the picture options to the frame and connection settings.

You must register your frame even if you don’t intend to use the online services — which are complimentary for the first six months. After that, you can opt between a basic, $5/month plan and a premium, $10/month plan for updating frame settings, storing media and downloading images from content channels. Online content from sites such as E!Online, the Weather Channel, TrafficStation and Getty Art is available to load into your frame.

With an existing Net connection you can upload images to Kodak’s StoryBox Network, create and arrange them in album collections, and prepare them for downloading into your frame at the next automatic update connection.

It takes about five minutes to download 20 low-resolution copies of your pictures to the frame.

The Smart Frame comes with a one-year warranty.

Sony (PHD-A55) Sony’s modern-looking standalone unit priced at $700 features a beveled Plexiglas faceplate. Although a Memory Stick is not included — which is about $100 extra for a whopping 64 megabytes — this versatile frame can display still images or movies that use Sony Memory Stick technology.

The priciest unit in our comparison, the PHD-A55 accordingly makes viewing images a snap — just pop the Memory Stick out of your camera, swing out the control panel, and insert it into the slot provided. The frame can be oriented either horizontally or vertically through an adjustable frame stand on the back. The LCD image area of the frame is clear and adequate.

Built with usual Sony excellence in quality, the frame uses several buttons to drive menu selections for its slide show configuration. You can delete and change the order in which your images are displayed. You can even elect to have a small digital clock and date display in a lower part of the image area. However, there is no warning that if you try to format the Memory Stick you lose all of the pictures on it.

Sony also includes its Picture Gear software for PC or Mac photo editing. Images can be transferred via a USB Memory Stick Reader accessory (about $120) to a Memory Stick and viewed on the frame.

The frame comes with a 90-day warranty.