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Posts Tagged ‘frame design’

Digital photo frames are often criticized by technology gurus for being simple and mundane gadgets. If this is so it causes me to wonder how some manufactures still can make them so exasperating.

Wanting to get the full consumer experience I recently purchased Pandigital frame from a local electronics superstore for review.  From the box I learned that 7” Pandigital frame has the following features: 1GB Internal Memory that holds up to holds up to 6400 images, LCD display, 4:3 Aspect Ratio,  SD/MS/MS-PRO/MMC/XD Card Reader compatibility, remote control, alarm clock, calendar, programmable ON/Off timer, audio, video and is both bluetooth and WiFi compatible.

While I selected the Pandigital PAN7000DW specifically for its WiFi function, I was soon to learn that getting WiFi was not going to be easy. While the frame’s box was quick to communicate that it is WiFi compatible, only after reading through the instruction manual did I learn that the generic WiFi adaptor I also bought for it would not work. Buried deep in the user’s manual, which is sealed in the frame’s box, are instructions to specifically buy a Pandigital WiFi adaptor… which, inconveniently, only can be purchased online for $23.99.

With a suggested list price of $99.99 the frame, the Pandigital PAN7000DW has a nice crisp picture will integrate with a variety of home interior styles.  However the physical design of the frame has some serious flaws including:

• The piece of glass that nests in the plastic frame is not secured and therefore could be broken if one is not careful.
• The adjustable foot is “light weight” and feels like it could snap and break when compared to the way the rest of the frame is constructed.
• The single speaker’s volume was barely audible, sounding almost as if the speaker was blown.
• The remote control, when stored on the back of the frame, totally covers the speaker and further muffles the sound.
• The WiFi adaptor hangs off the side in clear site instead of being hidden.

I also found some glitches with the internal functions of the Pandigital Frame including:

• The clock’s 1/8^th inch high numeric readout is very difficult to read.
• There is no “snooze” functionality built into the alarm clock.
• Fading from picture to picture in a slideshow was jumpy.
• When Zoom function was engaged, the top of the picture as obstructed with a ½ inch darkened band that displayed the image’s file name, time and date.
• The “back/previous” picture review function would not work.
• There was an approximate 10 second delay from the time on pressed the zoom button to the actual zoomed up image being displayed.
• Music files, loaded to internal memory, would NOT play when viewing a slideshow either streamed via WiFi or from an external memory card.

While I found the glitches, hiccups and design snafus of the Pandigital PAN7000DW a bit annoying; setting up the WiFi connectivity was exasperating.

Before I go into details, let’s be clear about WiFi connectivity in digital frame. A WiFi can be configured to communicate out through a router, over the internet and directly into a photo hosting website and/or it can be set to connect and pull pictures right off a local PC.

So while tedious and time consuming, I did find setting up WiFi connectivity to the 3 compatible photo hosting sites (Windows Frame It, SnapFish and Picasa) on the Internet was easy.

However, setting up the WiFi connectivity so that the frame could display pictures stored on a PC was SUPER exasperating.  First off, the instructions guiding one to set up a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) Server, published in Pandigital’s owner’s manual, are minimal and wrong. A 25 minute call to Pandigital Customer support finally resulted in some guidance that helped.  The polite support tech told me that while he had never actually set up this type of WiFi connectivity he assured me all that needed to be done was to make sure that the desired image files were being “shared” in Windows Media Player 11 and “the frame would do the rest.” So after spending some time fiddling, futzing and tweaking I finally got it to work. Well, it worked yesterday. Today is a whole new day and for some reason the Pandigital frame has lost its WiFi connection to the PC and the files it displayed yesterday. Why doesn’t it see the files it saw yesterday? I am not sure as nothing was changed.

After spending hours, reading manuals, searching the internet for solutions, reading online support information, being on hold, talking to customer support and then trial and error tweaking to get it to work yesterday I give up. I don’t have the time to figure out NOW what is going wrong. At this point this mundane Pandigital frame is just another lost cause and I am resigned to be another exasperated consumer.

Digital cameras and digital frames have made the world a greener place. When you think about it, film is not an ecologically responsible media at all. Film is plastic coated with chemicals. Once manufactured, film is then encased in a plastic or metal cartridge, which then is either put directly into a box or into another plastic container and then boxed for retail sales. The production and packaging of film uses tons of plastic, paper, chemicals and inks… and that is before it is loaded into a camera and a single shot is taken.

Then, once shot, the film needs to be processed. Before processing the film is removed from the cartridge which is then disposed of. Once the film is processed and made into a negative, the image can finally be transferred on to photo print paper. All this film and print “processing” requires additional energy, chemicals (which by the way come in plastic containers), paper and water.

Once printed and taken home, photographs are typically stored in some sort of container. Be it paper box, plastic bin, photo album, traditional frame or even a drawer, photos eventually are stored somewhere. We don’t often think about it, but storage space is typically some sort of container that is made up of material(s)… paper, plastic, wood, glass or metal. However, digital frames can act as storage space too. Unlike traditional frames, digital frames have a dual purpose. Not only do they display photos, but they also can act as storage for hundreds and sometimes thousands of photos ultimately saving space and resources.

Now it is true digital frames do require plastic and chemicals to manufacture, and the paper for packaging to initially market. Plus they will require energy to operate, but in the long run they are much greener solution.  First of all, unlike cell phones, consumers do not upgrade digital frames often. These simple devices can last for years and years. I personally have been using the same digital frame now for nearly 9 years… and have no plans of changing it out. One frame will last a long time.

As I mentioned before, digital frames require energy. But the amount of energy a typical 7” digital frame requires is only about the same amount of energy to light up a 40 watt light bulb. Since most frames can be programmed to “sleep” their energy consumption can be reduced to a trickle.  Energy consumption is further reduced in digital frames that build in other functions such as clocks, radios and phones. These multipurpose frames collapse energy consumed by many devices into one and in turn reduce overall energy consumption.

Finally, there is one other type of green a digital frame can save… that is the green we call “CA$H.”  Using the formula for estimating energy consumption posted on US Department of Energy’s website, a typical 7” frame will consume only $20.47 worth of energy per year based on the frame being turned “on” for 14 hours a day and “sleeping” for the remaining 10.  Considering the hundreds and hundreds of photos a frame holds and the sheer cost that would be associated with processing an equivalent amount of pictures, $20.47 a year seems like a bargain to me.

So until the next post… that’s the green CeivaJoe knows.

POST NOTE: This post was inspired by blog I read last week entitled Green Tip Of The Week – Go Digital With Your Camera authored by Tracy over on Planet Forward’s blog. Thanks Tracy for the inspiration… you motivated me to look a little deeper and know a little more.

For my first digital photo frame review, I selected the Sony S-Frame Model DPF-V1000. To be thorough, I actually set Sony’s frame up and used it for over two weeks. I wanted to dig into it  and really get to know and use the frame the way a consumer would. As I was taking my notes, I noticed that for every good thing I liked about the frame I always felt the need to qualify what I wrote with a “but” statement.

I selected Sony’s frame because recently there has been much talk about the design of the frames in Sony’s S-Frame series. I have to say the frame’s overall design is beautiful to look at; the fit and finish is perfect. But, as every designer knows, “good design is in the details” and it is in the details where the frame falls a little short. First, surprisingly there is no integrated holster/caddy to store the small remote control that comes with it. Next, I found that the frame’s trendy high gloss black finish with shiny chrome accents was a fingerprint magnet.  Also, because the rear leg extends back 6 ½ inches the frame can really only be viewed from the right side when it sits on shelf and takes up quite a bit of space on a night stand.  Finally, the frame’s sleek and modern design style, looking much like a miniature computer screen, would most likely clash with more traditional décors.

The DPF-V1000’s 10.2” LCD wide-screen picture is clear and bright… the quality you would expect from Sony. But, because the screen is a wide-screen (16:9 aspect ratio) a little less than 1/3 of the screen becomes useless black bands when viewing photos generated by most consumer cameras which are 4:3 aspect ratio. The black banding becomes even more awkward to look at when the frame is turned on end to portrait mode.

Surprisingly the frame, which looks hi-tech, relies on older card reader technology.  As a stand-alone frame, it accommodates all the popular card formats.  Pictures files can be moved from the card and into the frame’s 1GB of memory. But, I have to admit I was a bit perplexed as to whether the upload was complete after I moved my pictures over. A simple “Upload Complete” message would have saved the time it took to look around and confirm that the pictures were actually moved.  Also in this wireless age, I found that fiddling, futzing and fingerprinting the frame to load it with a new batch of pictures from a card was a frustrating and tedious task. A Blue Tooth adapter is available for the frame that retails for $249.99. The adapter would be an additional $29.99 for a total of $279.98.

Maybe to compensate for the fact that it is sold as a free standing frame, Sony packed it full of internal features. But, having to dig deep looking through layers and layers of menus to access those features is time consuming and confusing.  This coupled with the fact that for some reason the remote control required that I press the button numerous times in order for the frame to register my selection was extremely annoying.

While reviewing this frame, I learned that using an internal photo editing feature can be quite limiting. The frame’s Auto Touch -Up feature makes six basic corrections; but, going through the correction process with each picture one by one is quite slow and often results in a final “touched up” version that has negligible improvement.  Another feature called Creative Edit is a nice idea, but it is very limited in the choices it offers in the way of decorative borders and stamps. After using the photo frames built in picture editing, I came to the conclusion that ultimately it would be better to find a more robust PC or web solution (many of which are even free) for photo editing and decorative enhancement. It is also important that I note that photos edited in Photo Shop and converted to GIF file would not load onto the frame.

Finally, one of the features I was particularly interested in was the HDMI interface that would allow me to connect the frame to my Sony BRAVIA XBR LCD TV for big screen picture viewing. But, to make this connection I needed to dole out another $19.99 to purchase a special HDMI cable. Once connected, the show on my 46” TV screen had mixed results. New pictures that I shot using my camera’s super fine High Quality mode looked great on the TV.  Pictures I shot in the Normal Quality mode looked OK. Old paper prints that I had scanned and converted to a digital image looked OK when viewed on the frame, but looked horrible on the big screen. I realize this lack of quality is not due to a fault in the frame. My point is that while the HDMI connectivity feature is enticing, don’t expect that same clear image you get when viewing a small picture on a small screen to always transfer over to a larger screen.

FINAL VERDICT: I would have to say that considering the suggested list price of $249.99 the 10 Inch Sony S-Frame is an expensive sleek and shiny beauty on the outside, but cumbersome and perplexing on the inside.

With each passing day there seems to be yet another digital picture frame being introduced to the marketplace. Typically what’s offered as “new” to the market is really another company doing what others have done before. However two new products have been released that takes digital frames to a new place… literally. One is the Hama Digital Photo Album the other is Sondata’s Shake –A-Pix portable mini album.

Hama Digital Photo Album

This digital “frame” is actually an electronic album used to store your favorite pictures to have ready to show when needed.

The Hama Digital Photo Album, with a 7” screen, it can fit in a pocket or purse. Its screen displays picture formats like JPEGS in 800×480 pixel resolutions. Operating on rechargeable batteries, its view time will last about 2 ½ hours on a full charge.

Like most digital frames, pictures can be transferred via the usual USB interface; and can store about 4GB of image files and supports the most common memory solutions like SD, SDHC and MM cards.

While pricing and release date have not yet been announced, the idea of a portable digital photo album looks like a promising idea.

Sondata Shake-A-Pix mini Digital Album

Borrowing the idea from the iPhone that uses shaking motion to engage functionality in some apps,  Sondata believes its tiny 2.4in photo frame, called Shake A Pix,  it is the world’s first portable digital photo album utilizing motion sensors. Quite simply…  shake it  to browse through your favorite photos.

This mini frame (and I do mean mini) has an internal memory of 32MB which, depending on file size ¸is just about enough memory to hold up to 170 jpeg or bitmap images. Photos are transferred into the 50g photo frame via USB connections.

The 5mm-thick photo frame measures 90×50mm has its own built in retractable stand. Its all powered by a tiny lithium-ion battery which can keep photos displayed for up to three hour on a single charge. Retail pricing for this mini album is expected to be $38.

Yesterday the Internet was all abuzz and twittering about SilverPac’s SilverFrame being shown at Computex in Taipei.

Engadget’s blog on the subject thought that SilverPac was doing “it’s best to break the boring mold of typical digital photo frames”. While over at Gizmodo they wondered if “SilverPac SilverFrame Is a Questionably Acceptable Use of the Term ‘Digital Picture Frame’.”

All this got me wondering, and wanting to ask a few questions.

• Is SilverPac truly “breaking the mold” or is it snuffing out the digital frame’s true purpose?
• At what point does a manufacturer cram a “frame” so full with technology and functionality that it no longer becomes a digital frame and becomes something else?
• Are the engineers that designed this “frame,” thinking that just because it has a video screen it needs to be filled up with a lot of gadgetry like a computer?

When it comes to product design for digital photo frames I could not help but think of two famous principles of GOOD design.

“LESS IS MORE” and “FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION”

To be honest, I am not sure this “gadget” adheres to these basic design principles. Why do I say this? Well, picture frames (even “traditional” frames for old fashioned paper pictures) are such that they sit in the background in our homes and offices passively displaying and sharing images of past moments that mean so much to us. Be it simplistic, picture display is the function of the form.

So I can’t help but wonder. Do people really want to fiddle, futz and get greasy fingerprints on another gadget that has functions commonly found on their computer, or better yet, their cell phone?

If showing personal photos is to be the primary function of the form, then I believe these over designed forms are not true digital picture frames. But what are they? Well, to be honest I am not sure what to call them. I do know that at CEIVA, photo display/sharing is the primary function we honor in our forms.

So until the next post… that’s what CeivaJoe knows!

POST SCRIPT: Do I see a trend? Since posting this blog this morning I have come across another “video screened gadget” being reviewed with the hopes that it be considered a digital photo frame. PC WORLD says in their review of Trancend’s PF720 that it “does it all, but… might be too much for those looking for a straightforward picture frame.“  And Tom’s Hardware writes “We’re also wondering why SilverPac is calling this a digital picture frame…” Hmmm… I guess it is not only me after all.

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