Customer Reviews

Digital Spectrum MemoryFRAME MF-8115 Premium 15-Inch Wireless Digital Frame - Photo, Video and MP3 Player

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Bought $400, 15-inch version of frame. Failed within 30 days. Contacted Digital Spectrum for advance exchange as it was already given as gift to my very sick mother-in-law. They agreed to send immediate replacement if I provided copy of receipt. I emailed copy within minutes and they confirmed receipt. Replacement never came. I sent multiple emails to the "RMA manager", Jorge Leal, and I CC'ed the sales, marketing and support departments. NO RESPONSE FROM ANYONE IN WEEKS!

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND BUY SOMETHING ELSE!

I spend a lot of money on this frame and was very dissapointed when I turned it on. The quality was not nearly as good as I expected and you could not see the picture well if you were looking at it from an angle. You needed to be looking at it straight on. I also found the frame to be very flimsy. For something that cost approx $350, it should include more than a flimsy black frame. My frame was chipped as well, so I ended up returing it.

I purchased this item from Amazon (not a 3rd party seller). The return address indicated that it came from their Returns Department. It would not maintain a network connection and the remote was dead.

Overall, the unit responded slowly to commands and seems to be at a beta level of development.

bought 15inch premium wireless digital frame, display color poor.Failed within few hour, return to amazon get refund.

So I bought this in spite of the reviews that said they had problems with getting this thing to work on their network. I figure odds were that it was just a little difficult to work with; however, I'm an IT professional. I have an advanced degree in Electrical Engineering.

Here is the problem. This is just a poor product. I believe the main problem is the antenna in the system is simply non existent.

The first frame that showed up to my house would not even find my home network. I tried for a couple days thinking I was missing something and finally returned it as defective. The second frame showed up and could find my network.

Here is where the knock on Ease of Use comes in. I run a WPA encrypted network as I'm assuming most folks do at this point. But this thing makes it murder to type in the key by not taking a passphrase. In addition it doesn't really say what it will take. I mean the alternative to passphrase is the entire key BUT that key can be typed in a couple of ways either in hex or in asci. The problem with ASCI is that if you are using a preexisting passphrase there is no requirement that the ASCI conversion of that be printable characters. They can resolve to linefeeds and tabs and such. The screen you use to type this information in contains the entire alphabet lower and uppercase. I tried simply typing in the hex but that did not work.(Not to mention the phrase is 64 char long.) If they wanted the hex they sure should have only included the numbers and letters you need to type it in. It should would have been a lot easier. Also a way to store that value even if it's wrong so you could go back and edit it would have been great.

So I gave up on WPA. I tried WEP. Same problem. I never got any security to work. I removed all security and finally got the frame on the network. Next I tried to connect it to a flickr page. It connected fine. So I added a second. Failure again. I checked what I typed in and it was correct. So I removed that one and added a different one. That one worked. After playing with it for a couple of days the very first page would no longer work. I was stumped. After a bit more trial and error I go back to the detect network and look and the frame was still able to see my now unsecured network but it only had 2 bars of signal. I found this odd. I mean the frame was a mere 8 feet from the AP. I moved about the room testing. I figure out that the signal was SO weak that if I moved my seat even a small amount it would lose connection. This was what was causing the erratic behavior of seeing or not seeing flickr feeds.

So as a wireless product it's an utter failure.

Now for my other ratings. I thought the frame looked really nice. It has a removable outer frame so you can change up the look although I could not find anywhere that sold replacements for it. I rated the ease of use very low because I could not get it connected to a secure network although I suspect this was due to the poor wireless abilities. It has a ton of great features. If you want a very large frame and just want to use it with a USB/flash I think it would do an excellent job. The picture quality was extremely good. It was large and looked nice; however, there didn't appear to be any picture controls. The problem was both frames were a little blown out in dark rooms. It would have been nice to be able to decrease the brightness a bit. I have no idea what portability means in this situation but I'm going to assume it's how well you can move it from room to room and with the wireless ability nonexistent I'm going to rate it the lowest possible.

Finally customer support. Yes I didn't go it alone but I might as well have. I tried contacting the by phone and email. Via phone I was never able to get in touch with anyone. Via email I had a couple of completely useless replies...

Here is one of my emails...
"I finally managed to get the frame connected to the network if I turn off all encryption including WEP. But this is no way to run permanently. Can you give me some kind of suggestion as to what I could be doing wrong? Your manual is kind of vague it simply says security key. Does that mean it wants the hex key? It says it can't use the passphrase. But if it only wanted the hex key why did you include all the rest of the letters and symbols? I really need some help here or else I'll have to send the product back.

Thanks,

Shelby J Hill"

First reply from DSI support
"Huy why is this happening can you shed some light..?"

Second reply from DSI support
"I will ask my engineering group about this..."

Those are the complete emails by the way minus the support persons signature. I don't find it useful to punish individuals as I believe this is systemic to the entire company.

Hope that helps others to avoid a little pain. As a plain old digital frame I still think this product is rather nice. But it's being sold as a wireless frame which I feel it's not.

I bought two of these and both could never successfully connect and share my pictures wirelessly. Save the hassle and purchase another wireless frame.

I bought this picture frame as a Christmas gift. The product is well put together and has a great picture. I hooked it to Framechannel picture sharing site. Setting this up to work can be a little frustrating if you try and use the instructions only. All features now work on ours but it took a good bit of fiddling to get it right. Using Framechannel was the final piece to the puzzle. Great picture, 15" shows well. Recommend this product but have patience when setting up.

Pros:
Internet enabled - I recommend [...]/ - it allows you to upload your own pictures and subscribe to many other channels
(also works with flickr, windows myspace, webshots and DSI's own online site)

Size - 15" - I can see the pictures across the room

Great image - backlight is strong enough to have lights above the frame and still see the image clearly

Cons:
remote control I received only works intermittently - having to set up the configuration using the buttons on the frame was awkward (but with patience, it worked as advertised)

the actual (exterior black) frame looks fine from a distance, feels like cheap plastic

I received this yesterday and it took about 30 minutes to set it up, get an account with framechannel.com, upload some content and get pictures displaying on it. It's perfect for my (technically challenged) parents - I can set it up once for them and have pictures of their grandchildren showing up on it anytime they turn it on.
I can add new pictures to their frame anytime, anywhere and best of all, there's no monthly cost. At 15" with a high resolution, even backlight - it's visible across the room even for my elderly parents. I was concerned that 256mb on-board memory was too limiting, but using it to display images from the rss feed that updates every 15 minutes, it doesn't seem to be a limiting item.

IT ROCKS

The pictures are high quality and being able to pull content from many different sources really makes it useful to me. I highly recommend it.