Digital Picture Frames?

[BiikeMike]

I'm looking for a fathers day present for my dad, and I thought a digital picture frame with a bunch of pictures of his kids loaded on it would be great for his new desk at his new job. Only problem is, I've found a bunch that are in my price range (<$100) but the resolution is 480x234. The ones with a resolution of 800 or higher jump way up in price.

Will it really make that big of a difference? I'm looking in the 7"-8" range.

[CoolToolGuy]

I'm looking for a fathers day present for my dad, and I thought a digital picture frame with a bunch of pictures of his kids loaded on it would be great for his new desk at his new job. Only problem is, I've found a bunch that are in my price range (<$100) but the resolution is 480x234. The ones with a resolution of 800 or higher jump way up in price.

Will it really make that big of a difference? I'm looking in the 7"-8" range.

The resolution itself is not a big issue, but the cheaper frames have cheaper LCDs. They suffer from poor color transitions.

I don't favor internal memory - I use CF or SD cards that I load for the frames. That way you can give dad 'photo albums' over time that he can show whenever he wants.

Hope this helps.

Have Fun,

[StewartR]

One thing you might want to think about is that 480x234 is a pretty strange aspect ratio. It's approximately 2:1. I don't know how these machines handle images that aren't exactly the right shape, but if they 'letter-box' them to make them fit then you'll only get 351x234 usable. That's not much.

Actually 480x234 isn't much either. Here's what it looks like.

177329

Imagine that number of pixels blown up to 7" across, and it's a pretty low-resolution image...

[BiikeMike]

The resolution itself is not a big issue, but the cheaper frames have cheaper LCDs. They suffer from poor color transitions.

I don't favor internal memory - I use CF or SD cards that I load for the frames. That way you can give dad 'photo albums' over time that he can show whenever he wants.

Hope this helps.

Have Fun,

What do you have? any suggestions?And Stewart, I did think that was kind of an odd aspect, and that it won't look great in a 7'' frame

[Dchemist]

I bought my mother a frame from www.cieva.com.Its 640x480 and it loads new photos from a server via a toll free phone line. It works great - you can upload new photos remotely (or allow others to do so as well) and the appear next day. It rotates 20 photos in sequence. The service costs about $60/year. Works great. Dennis

[Dchemist]

I bought my mother a frame from www.cieva.com.Its 640x480 and it loads new photos from a server via a toll free phone line. It works great - you can upload new photos remotely (or allow others to do so as well) and the appear next day. It rotates 20 photos in sequence. The service costs about $100/year. Works great. Dennis

[CoolToolGuy]

What do you have? any suggestions?

Soup to nuts. I have several of the latest iterations. The Westinghouse 7.0 has a decent image, but it has a built-in slideshow that wants to display more than one image at once. It can be overridden, but it takes a bit to learn how to use it. Several other no-name brands were inexpensive, but the IQ is lousy. My original Kodak SmartFrame has great IQ, but it loads images very slowly.

My best advice is to try them out if possible - load up a card and take it with you. If you are buying online, take your chances. One thing to watch for - if it says "works with most cards" it may not include a CF card slot - check to make sure it will take the card format you plan to use. It seems like there are a ton of cheap frames out there with IQ to match, and the ones with really good IQ are $300-$400 - but there are lots of new models coming out quickly.

Good luck and keep us posted.

Have Fun,