Customer Reviews

Digital Spectrum 5x7 PV1 MemoryFrame Personal Media Player

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I bought this as an anniversary gift for my folks who have begun taking tons of digital pictures. After doing a bit of research, I ordered the 5x7 PV1. It arrived sooner (about 5 days) than estimated and delighted the folks in general. My father called about a week later and said it was the first electronic device (vs. computers, PDAs, GPS', printers, etc.) that he'd ever had that was TRULY plug and play - no hassles, missing software upon installation, glitches, restarts, adjustments, etc. He'd installed it, plugged his camera's memory card into it, and away it went! For folks who really want a way to see their digital photos instead of just glancing at them when they're first downloaded and then don't really do much with them after that, this is a great device! I just wish the 8x10 model was a bit more affordable...

For those that are expecting a picture like you see on your computer monitor, you will be very disappointed. The consumer technology is not there yet to make such a thing for less than $150. Yes, you can buy a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor for $100 or less, but you don't get a computer or any type of firmware to display pictures.

So given that there would be some resolution problems from angles, etc. I went ahead and bought it. And I myself am OK with it.

If you want to set this up in your office, house, etc. to just run a slideshow, you can do it. I wish the frame itself was more "frame-like" and had a wooden look and not so plastic "iMac" looking. There are ones that look good (check out Brookstone), but they are more expensive. And yes, it does have a power cord to plug into the wall. It takes a lot to power an LCD continuously, those looking for batteries would end up going through them at a pretty fast rate. IMHO the power cable works better.

I found the manual that came in the box was terrible. You can download the one here off this page on Amazon, or go to Pacific Digital's website. When I tried it, they are both the same, but much better than the one in the box. Now it is not perfect by any definition, but it is better.

As explained by another reviewer, the frame does have both Firewire and USB 1.1 ports, so you could use some outside storage source, like a USB memory stick ("thumbdrive") or the like. If you opt to use your camera's memory stick, check to make sure yours works - it only takes CompactFlash, SecureDigital and MMC as far as I can tell. Another thing you want to think about is having an extra camera memory stick - one for your camera and one for the frame. You don't need an extra memory stick that is that big. The frame appears to convert anything you take to 640x480 size, which is pretty small for today's digital cameras. So on a 32MB memory stick, you should be able to load about 40 pictures that are 640x480. If that is too technical for you, if you use the smallest and most economical resolution on your camera, that is probably 640x480.

The frame can play audio and MPEGs as well. It's not great sound or video quality, but the functionality is there. But I would not buy this solely for showing MPEGs. You can have it play sounds while the slideshow is going.

I don't see how people had a hard time getting it to work. Assuming you have a supported memory card, it only takes a few button presses to work. The more tech savvy could probably figure things out by trial and error, but I still would recommend getting the full manual.

Last thing - I haven't played around with it, but the frame does have some on-board memory. You can store pictures on the frame itself. The manual does not state how much memory is there, so you would have to experiment.

Someday consumer technology will get better and cheaper, and I'll buy that frame then. But for this frame, overall for the money it is OK. I'd give it 3.5 stars instead of 3 if I could. Just temper your expectations of picture quality, particularly from side angles.

PROS:

We've had one of these for about a year. I think its pretty easy to get pictures into the frame - I currently use an SD card and a compact flash card. I use google's picassa software to do a mass export to 640x480 which works out well. We have it in our living room and its nice to look over and see different pics all the time.

CONS:
Well, the viewing angle on the screen isn't the best - so, you have to be looking at it just so to see it. The screen size is kind of smallish - I think its smaller than a 5x7 picture. And the frame itself looks like a toy - not a picture frame.

While I would buy one of these again (especially if its close to $100), I would be more likely to purchase a digital frame with a slightly larger screen, and a more traditional wood frame look to it, for slightly more...

This digital photo frame has a ton of great ways to get photos on it. About every type of card slot and a USB port you can stick a thumb drive into. It's a good price too.

But the screen is awful. The viewing angle is very bad, the color is washed out with a green tint. The resolution is downright poor.
In short, it's the worst LCD screen I have ever seen.

I was under the impression that we would soon have flying cars and the such as this is the 21st century. I also thought that we would have neat digital photo slideshow thingies like they have in all of the future spaceshipy movies. Something to look at and remember the families that we left behind, including bits of video and sound.
This thing does all of that with two major drawbacks.

1. No battery. It is all driven off of a power cord. yuck.
2. The resolution on the screen sucks. It is not even as good as a screen on the back of a cheap digital camera.

2.5. Color quality is not so good. Viewable angle is horrid.

I expected more for this price point. But it is what it is.
Would I buy another one?
Um.. no.

I bought 4 of these units for family members this Christmas. First of all, the screen resolution is absolutely awful and requires straight on viewing. Any tilting up/down or sided to side results in severe dimming. The resolution of the screen on my cell phone is better than this frame. The pixel size on this screen is really large. I spent quite a bit of time transferring 400 image files to a CF card. Only the first 25 of them will appear. The rest give a blank screen with the caption "file not support" (great grammar, might I add). The weird thing was that if I manually fowarded to a different file, a really pixelated image of the file would appear then the blue screen with the bad grammar would appear. After this, I could not access the image at all. I put the CF card in my computer and all of the images are on it. I'm hoping I'll be able to return them-wish me luck.

I purchased one of these for my wife for valentines day and preloaded it with our wedding photos and our wedding song (in case someone else would like to steal my idea ; )
The resolution isn't great, but it's definitely acceptable, plenty bright. Very easy to use. I was also quite suprised and pleased to find the audio was very clear and lound enough to easily hear. I haven't tried playing movies on it, so I can't comment on that functionality.

I will start by saying I only gave this item 4 stars because we have not yet had a chance to play with all the features. For out of the box ease of use and ready to play our digital photos right off the memory card from the camera it would have to score 5 stars. If you've got family that is not tech savy don't worry as this unit is nearly plug and play and it really took nothing more than plugging it in and putting a memory card in it to start showing our images.

We hope to have the time to play with the software some and to get both converted images, some mp3's and some movie files onto the unit here soon but if what we have seen so far is the norm then using the more advance features will be a breeze as well.

I use my memory frame every day to read my ebooks-which I convert into JPEG picture files. Video files are super easy to watch if you use Xilisoft's video converter. I am really pleased with this item, and all the included options.

I bought this hoping it would be a substitute for printing pictures for my wife to show to friends: no-way! I was apparently naive in assuming I would get the same picture resolution and color quality as my laptop. It was also very slow changing pics. Don't bother.