Customer Reviews

Ceiva Advanced Digital Photo Receiver

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

This product has a very specific role. It makes the perfect gift for someone who is not very computer saavy. If the person has easy email and internet access, it makes more sense (and is much cheaper) to send pictures to them through other means.

My husband and I purchased this frame for his mom. We had previously tried to give her a computer but it collected dust. Since she loves pictures of the grandkids and we live several hours away, we thought this would be a good gift.

The first step--plugging it in--was simple. The frame needs to have a location with easy access to both phone and electricity, or you'll have cords all over the place. Once attached, it starts displaying the Ceiva company information, including the customer service phone number.

Getting the frame to properly connect and load pictures was more involved. First, it needs to be registered at the Ceiva site (that had to happen "off-site" since my mother-in-law doesn't have a computer). The website is where you load the pictures and set the guidelines for the frame (what times to turn it on and off and what number for the frame to call to load new pictures, etc) Then you need to purchase a subscription which costs almost as much as the frame on a yearly basis. Once that's done, it's supposed to be as easy as someone pushing a button (the big one on the base of the frame) and the pictures would load.

Unfortunately, it didn't work at first. Our frame took a few calls to customer service (luckily a circulating pre-loaded picture on the frame) and emails from us to correct the problem. Telephone customer service was courteous and gracious to my mother-in-law. Email customer service was slow and sometimes didn't respond directly, though they did take care of a separate problem eventually.

From my mother-in-law's perspective, the solution was just pushing that big button multiple times, intermittently over the course of the day, until it finally connected. I'm not sure it was the same solution from Ceiva's point of view.

Once that was resolved, EVERYTHING has worked like a dream. The frame revolves 30 different pictures. On the website, I keep everything in an album so I know which ones she's seen. My brother-in-law several states away can upload pictures onto her frame as well. We can also send captions with the pictures or special greetings on Mother's Day etc. She is absolutely thrilled, and I will probably be buying one for my grandmother (who is in a board and care home) this year.

PROS: Fabulous gift for the computer-less, can be accessed (on invitation/with password) by other loved ones to load their photos, easy to plug in, seamless operation once working

CONS: Expensive cost of subscription (factor it into your gift giving), took some time and customer service input to get it connected, unable to edit/crop photos on website (do it before), cost of ordering prints of photographs for the receiver (we use a different company)

In theory, this should be a great product. Here's a fairly reasonably priced Photo Display, at least for what's been around in the past few years. If someone doesn't have a computer, they can still use it..pretty much just plug it in and wait for the pictures to come.

I bought one for my 72 year old mother despite the mixed reviews online. It seemed that with the new model, some of the problems had been worked out and it was worth a shot. I figured I would beat the Christmas rush and get everything set up at my house before I wrapped the present. We could just plug it in and not worry about the tech support issues on Christmas Day.

Well here I am, about 12 hours after I first opened the box and I'm still waiting to finish downloading my photos and channels.

Here's the process: 1) I created an account and registered the receiver. I purchased the extended warranty and got the one year subscription. This was an easy set up and there were no problems here. 2) I selected 17 pictures from my computer and uploaded them to the site. Again, no real problems here. I used a program to reduce the size of the photos to less than 100k and reduced them to 640x480 pictures because of the info I read here. 3) I attempted to dial in to a local number and download the pictures. Here is where the trouble started. I had to dial in at least a dozen different times because of connection failures. I kept getting messages like "congestion" and "general failure". These messages have appeared over these past 12 hours. I had to unplug and restart the Receiver twice because it froze after attempting downloading. 4) I finally got the pictures downloaded and then attempted to add the Weather Channel, and a couple of picture channels to the Receiver. I went through the procedure to add the Weather Channel on the Website. It told me it was added, but never showed up in my "pictures to download" folder. I emailed customer support and got an automated reply back. I tried entering a different Zip Code and amazingly it worked for Minneapolis, but not St. Paul. 5) I then attempted to delete pictures through the website. I went through the ones I wanted to trash and followed the procedures as directed. The pictures were never deleted, so the channels did not download to the Receiver, because there wasn't space. I finally selected the pictures to delete on the Receiver itself and tried to download the channels again. I was finally able to download the Channels after several more failed attempts to connect to the network. 6) There are also ways on the website to change the duration of display preferences on the receiver. So far the changes I made in these preferences have not made it on any of the downloads. My pictures are stuck on 5 second display. I'm still working on trying to resolve this issue.

This might work out OK if you are willing to take the time to work through all these problems. If you are giving this to an elderly person or someone who has little or no computer experience, think again. You will probably have to provide tech support for them for this to work properly. I hate to think about all the people trying to get pictures on this thing Christmas Eve or Day.

The display itself seems to be adequate. The pictures are fairly bright and can easily be seen, even in a well lit room. The angle of viewing is OK, but not great. It's kind of like the old passive matrix computer screens...well, better than that, but not up to the quality of current LCD technology.

Improvements that I would like to see are viewing preferences on the display and a way to directly transfer pictures to the display without going through Ceiva. I realize this ruins their "razorblade" scenario for making money through annual subscriptions, but there has to be a better way of accomplishing transfer of the photos.

I have purchased three Ceiva receivers over the past several years.

I bought my first Ceiva for my (now) 97 year old grandmother when we realized that she was developing Alzheimer's. I liked the fact that I could use captions to jog her memory about names and faces. As her memory faded, I was able to alter the speed of the picture rotation to accomadate her needs. She says that all the residents of her unit want one. The nursing staff must look at the Ceiva too because they know when I put on new pictures.

Next I got a Ceiva for my in-laws. They don't need captions to remind them of our names, but they appreciate the postcard option where we can write longer descriptions of the events in the picture. The photos are also good as thank-you cards. We take a picture of our kids using the gift, and have them write a thank-you card in the margin.

My parents seemed a little envious of my grandmother's frame. Around that time, the Ceiva 2 came out. Setup was a little more complicated. The new frames allow the recipient to delete his or her own pictures. My parents have used this function to delete pictures they don't want. Everyone else loves the Weather Channel feature, but I discovered that they didn't when they twice deleted it from their frame. My parents really like new pictures. For when I am too lazy to do this, there is a picture rotation function. I like that the new frame holds more pictures than the old one.

My inlaw's frame eventually ceased to work. (That one I bought several years ago from ebay) It is difficult to trouble-shoot the frames from a distance. My inlaws brought it back to me so I could interface with tech support. I was able to find the information I needed online and customer support was responsive to my email. I have not tried to reach customer support by phone so I can't comment on the phone support problems experienced by others.

These frames do not have extremely high picture quality. However they are great for recipients who are not very computer literate. When my daughter leaves for college this fall, we will probably make photo CDs with PhotoShop, add an autorun feature and let her watch high quality pictures on her computer.

I got this picture frame for my grandparents, who are both in their eighties, to see pictures of our new son. They both love it, and that's really all that matters to me.

We live in Chicago, and they live in New Jersey, so we don't see each other very often. I took advantage of a trip for Poppa's 85th birthday to buy the receiver, take it out there and set it up for them. The setup is a snap. They've moved it once already (from room to room) and had no problems setting it back up. (Note that if you set it up in one area code and move it, you'll have to do some configuration changes to get it to dial the new number. I made sure that I set it up for their area code before I took it out there.)

The picture quality is very good, but the viewing angle isn't so great. You pretty much have to view the frame from directly in front of it. This newer model can hold 30 images, and I usually upload 640x480 JPEGs that are around 50KB each. It connects every night around midnight or so via their phone line and a local number I picked. A little green LED on the front panel blinks to let them know that new pictures are waiting.

The spring-loaded plastic panel on the front feels cheaply made and on my unit had a weak spring that didn't push it out all the way. But you only need it to manually advance through the pictures, order prints, or delete an image. You can use the Ceiva without pulling out the panel.

Back in Chicago, I just upload images to the festive-looking ceiva.com website (they change the site icon theme for every season) and they sit in the inbox waiting for the overnight connection. Ceiva has a nice upload tool that can upload single or multiple (up to 30) images. It can also customize them by adding captions, background color, etc. However, it doesn't let you see a preview of the changes before you upload the image. The upload tool can also email the pictures to friends who don't have a Ceiva. But it doesn't work like you might think: instead of sending them a message with the images as attachments they get an email with a link that takes them to a "crippled" slideshow on Ceiva's website. Still, it's better than no email at all.

The Ceiva website also lets you invite family members and friends to upload pictures to the unit via your account. Since I have a large family that lives all over the world, this is a nice feature to have. The accounts are limited, though. They can only use their account to upload pictures. They don't have access to my master album, which would be nice so they could see my pictures and order prints.

As a word of caution, from things I've seen posted around the Internet: if you want the best experience with this product buy it before or after Christmas, which is when everyone buys it and swamps Ceiva's website and tech support staff. I've emailed a question to tech support and received a response within a day, which isn't so bad.

Two other minor quibbles I have with the product:
- I wish the monthly subscription was cheaper. I don't like buy gifts for people with a monthly subscription attached, so I pay it. But is it worth $.../month to upload/download images to a website? I'd rather pay somewhere around $...or have it be free.
- Instead of a phone line the Ceiva should be able to connect over an existing Internet connection (i.e., TCP/IP). That way my parents, who are missionaries in Thailand, could have one as well.

But all in all, this is a good product, and the thank you's that I keep getting from my grandparents consistently affirm that.

Summary:
Concept: Awesome. I had an ailing Grandfather in an assisted living home who was able to enjoy memories (I utilized the album function to store lots of photos from his past) by watching his frame and never having to touch it.

Customer Service: Average. They attempt to do the right thing, but their lack of financial support for their poor technology (basically if the frame stops working after 30 days it isn't their problem anymore) is very upsetting.

Technology: Poor hardware. Even the 'Ceiva II' I have now purchased suffered severe rebooting issues before finally stabilizing. And I highly recommend the extended warranty - though it is disgusting that you actually are buying for one year of protection...you aren't _extending_ any warranty they provide.
Their Website for maintaining the frame is very easy to use and has come a long way in allowing lots of different functionality to personalize your frame.

Cost: High (too high). Now that they've come up with the Ceiva II the subscription rate is $90 a year. Pretty steep. Be sure that if you have technological problems with your frame that you demand the addition of weeks/months added to that subscription.

My History: I bought my first Ceiva Digital Photo Receiver (the 'Ceiva I' as it is now referred to) in October of 2001. Actually I purchased two. Right out of the box one worked (after a bunch of hassle forcing it to dial-in repeatedly) and one did not. Ceiva sent me a refurbished frame in replacement of the one that didn't work (though this refurbished frame worked great, it was disconcerting that they didn't send me a brand new frame).
The two frames worked good for 1.5 years. Then, the frame that was orginally okay out of the box suddenly stopped working. Back and forth, we decided to get a new frame to replace it. Ceiva was good about transfering the subscription we already had over to the new frame and adding a month of service since we were unable to utilize the frame during that time.
Five months later THAT frame stopped working! Ceiva claimed they had a rash of problems with a set of frames and said a little electrical connector should fix the problem. They sent the connector for free. It did not fix the problem. My feeling is that this connector should've been sent to all customers who received those faulty frames because it looked to be a device to stop electrical surges...and obviously once your frame is dead, it isn't going to fix it. Ceiva would not do anything to reimburse cost or swap frames. I was out the money. So, because it was a frame for my parents...and they were just about to have their first grandchild, I purchased the 'Ceiva II' to replace it. Big problem there is that it meant my subscription rate went automatically from $60/year to $90/year. OUCH. Again, Ceiva was good about extending my subscription for the time I was unable to utilize the frame.

Basically, Caveat Emptor. The concept is great, but there are hassles in your future with the technology, and additional $$ to be paid out.

We've given this gift to several of our family members and it has been a HUGE hit. Our family is spread out all over, and many of them are not computer savvy.

It has allowed my grandparents, who are thankfully still with us, to see their great-grandchild grow up on a daily basis even though they live very far away from us and are so afraid of new technology that they don't even have a VCR (they got one as a gift once, but it was "too complicated" so they gave it back. They absolutely love the Ceiva.

We are able to send out photos to all of these Ceivas and when our family members wake up in the morning, they are on display. Do I wish the service was cheaper? Well sure, it is always nice to spend less money, but I think the service is worth the fee because of the amount of joy it has brought to the people we have given it to. It helps us feel very connected over the many miles.

I've had to contact customer service around 6 times on behalf of the various Ceivas we've purchased. The first two times they were great and fast. Then they went through a period of being very slow. I think their sales outpaced their expectations and they weren't ready for customer service. The last two times I contacted them the response was reasonably fast, and they took care of the problem completely. As of the last time I spoke to them they were taking care of customer service in house still, which I am very glad of. I am so sick of companies who outsource.

I made the mistake of getting my mother and mother in-law Ceivas last year for Christmas. Both have failed within the first year of use. Ceiva's customer service is difficult to get ahold of (never respond to e-mails, 20min hold on phone) and inflexible on their policies. I made the further mistake of buying a new receiver to replace the one that failed after the warranty expired and found out that the 3 year prepaid subscription was not transferable to the new receiver unless I paid an additional year. Now I have a subscription through December of 2006 for a product I expect will fail within six months.

When it works the product is simple to use but the picture quality is substantially below what any computer LCD screen provides.

First, a little about the Ceiva. And then, a little about just how cool it really is.

The Ceiva is basically just a screen that shows digital pictures. I bought some last year that show 20 pictures at any one time. The new ones (I just got 3 more!) do 30 -- plus some very cool new stuff too.

See... what makes this so awesome, is that the Ceiva plugs into a phone line, and then dials out every night and grabs new pictures from your account -- you could get 30 new pictures every day. There's a cost for this service, but for the value, it's really quite reasonable. They have monthly and yearly plans, or if you're buying it as a gift, you can get a gift certificate good for a year of service.

This new Ceiva does some cool things the first one didn't. First, I can delete pictures out of my slideshow right from the unit. Before, I had to do it on Ceiva's website and then have the Ceiva dial in again. Also, if I like a particular picture, I can just hit a button, and it'll order prints of that picture for me -- and they'll show up in the mail in a couple of days!

We bought 5 Ceiva's last year. Each one of them has turned out to be amazing, in increasing our ability to share our lives, our joy, and our pain with our family.

My adopted daughter's great grandmother had one. Even though she was bedridden, she was able to keep up with Erin, and see pictures of our family, as well as her other grandchildren's families, as we sent her new pictures every day.

When my own grandmother passed away this year, we took pictures of all the friends and family who came for the funeral, and then sent some of those out to my sister, who couldn't make it. She still thanks me for that.

My wife's father likes the fact that the weather channel is available on the ceiva -- every night he gets a 3-day forecast uploaded, which he can see at a glance when he gets up in the morning. They're out in Missouri, and they call us every couple of days asking for new pictures.

I never thought such a little thing could have such a profound effect on our family, but it has. I can't recommend the ceiva high enough.

True, you must subscribe. But if you are purchasing it for a grandparent or anyone who has no computer, it is still cheaper than internet access. I look at it as an ongoing gift. I purchased one of these frames for each grandparent, and I renew them on a 3 year basis, which is cheaper. The grandparents LOVE getting up and checking the frame each day to see the new pictures I put on. Since they live 900 miles away, it is a great way for them to see the kids growing and keep up with what they are doing. They don't have computers, so I handle the controlling of the frame from mine. It is really a wonderful gift!

I was very excited about buying a CEIVA for my technology-phobic, West Coast parents, who are in their 80s. I thought they would love seeing pictures of the grandkids, and they did... the one time it worked. After MANY attempts to fix it, including over a dozen phone calls to CEIVA to try to get the problem resolved, CEIVA acknowledged defeat and told us to return the unit to them. (I might add in that 1) calls to customer service take FOREVER as they will keep you on hold for a a LOOOOONG time before you actually get to talk to anyone; 2) they weren't particularly nice during the calls, and intimated to my parents that perhaps they weren't smart enough to figure out how the thing worked).

Well, my parents returned the unit to CEIVA as instructed, after pointing out to the company that we hadn't bought it directly from them. CEIVA said this was ok -- they even provided a return authorization number. My parents promptly mailed it off. Thank goodness I told them as a precaution to send it with delivery tracking and insurance. CEIVA never acknowledged having received it; when I contacted them 6 weeks later to say that I hadn't seen a refund on my credit card, they couldn't find the receiver; then, when they finally did find it, they refused to refund our money, stating that their only remedy was to send a new receiver. Well, at this point, as you can imagine, my parents didn't want the friggin' thing. So I am now stuck with a $150 receiver and nobody to use it. CEIVA, and CEIVA customer service, is horrible. I wouldn't recommend their products to ANYONE.