Digital Photo Frames

[nakamura]

Looking at getting my wife a digital photo frame for xmas. We have so many pictures and it looks a nice way to have a few on display at once.
Not sure on which frame to go for though. Only have around ?50-60 to spend so it does limit somewhat.

I popped into Jessops yesterday and found this on offer.It had a few nice features such as MP3 and AVI playback with 2gb built in memory.

http://www.jessops.com/online.store/categories/Digital%20Photo%20Frames/products/Jessops/8%20Slimline%20Digital%20Picture%20Frame-78745/Show.html

Can anybody recommend anything?

[Ginger Tosser]

I managed to get a ok(ish) Kodak frame last year for mom and dad. To be honest it's never turned on. Also the frames tend to be in a widescreen format (16:9 ish) so getting pictures to fit without borders is a pain. I'd get a usb stick loaded with images and try a few out if possible. Some frames have really piss poor LCD panels.

[charlesr]

Definitely try before you buy. Some of them are so poor they stretch every picture and have terrible pixel mapping making a blurry mess. One with wifi would be a boon so you don't have to keep swapping the mem card. There's a kodak one for £70 on amazon with a 7" screen that has good reviews.

[charlesr]

No idea what features these things have, but they really need an auto-on-off feature for times of day, or perhaps movement sensor, so they only turn on for 10 mins say after someone has walked nearby. They need to be as easy to manage as real pictures, otherwise they will never get used.

I'm getting Lucy a photo of the kids as a jigsaw (from www.snapfish.co.uk) She likes jigsaws though.

[smouty]

Apparently these are on the least wanted present list.

http://www.yauze.com/digital-photo-frames-top-list-of-least-wanted-holiday-gifts-better-find-those-receipts.html

[Taka]

I concur.

I received one for my birthday a few years ago and was absolutely stoked at the prospect. Problem is, they had just about reached mainstream consciousness so the actual technology behind it was very, very poor.

As said, the screen was 480 x 640 resolution so pictures looked pathetic up close. It also lacked an accelerometer so if you had it in landscape, only landscape photos would be displayed correctly with portrait shots on their side, and vice versa for portrait stuff. It was slow and lacked a lot of customisation features. charlesr's suggestion of a timer mode is very much necessary since I'm not gonna go out of my way to switch it on and off all the time.

If you're willing to spend some serious cash, then there are good ones out there but otherwise you're better off spending it elsewhere.

[nakamura]

Thanks for all of the info gentlemen. I went to Bournemouth yesterday to have look around and one thing stuck out, the fact that every photoframe available was half price. Alarm bells started to ring so I walked away without a frame, came back here and your people confirmed I made the right choice.
Pity as the idea is very good.

Anyway, I picked the wife up the little dress she had her eye on instead.