Customer Reviews

Digital Spectrum U-30343 NuVue 7" Plus Digital Picture Frame

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I picked up this unit to give as a New Year's gift to some family friends, having not tried digital frames myself before. Considering the price, this unit is quite bad, I would say.

The most annoying thing about it must be that it has no respect for your photo's original aspect ratio. The algorithm it uses seems pretty simple ... and thoughtless: fill as many frame pixels with whatever image you have. So if that would cause squashing or stretching, so be it.

I actually tried to return it, but could not make it before the store closed for the holiday, so I fiddled with it, and got the way to "fix" your photos so they look OK on this frame:

1. The frame uses 16W:9H ratio, so the AR is 16/9 = 1.77778.
2. You need to determine your own AR. Be careful, it might not always be 4:3. I'm using a Canon 20D at Large and the ratio it has at this setting is 3W:2H (1.5)
3. Divide your AR by that of the frame (1.777). In my case, it's 1.5 divided by 1.7777 ==> 0.844.
4. Use any editing software to stretch (squash horizontally) your images by the factor you get (in my case by 84.4%). If your AR was 4:3 (ie 1.333), you would have had to squash your photo by (1.333 / 1.777) ==> 75% exactly, close the the result mentioned by one of the reviewers.
5. Oh, and while you're at it, you might want to make sure your images are not too large, otherwise the loading will become very slow.
6. Yes, it's a pain.

The documentation is virtually non existent. It looks like they noticed this issue as the thing was being shipped and decided to just keep quiet about it. there is no mention of Aspect Ratio anywhere on the box or included documentation.

Another bad thing about it is that the resolution is pretty low, and the music quality ... well, don't use music.

All in all, don't buy this unit if you haven't already done so.

I purchased this and quickly returned it because the quality is very poor. The pictures are distorted and grainy. I recommend spending and extra 50 dollars and purchase the Smartparts SPDPF84.

I got this Digital Photo Player today for Christmas. I had the same disappointing reaction as many of the previous reviewers -- my pictures looked smashed/stretched/weird. However, after playing around with my photos I discovered an easy solution to the "smashed" look of my pictures (the company can write me a thank-you note later :o)).

Basically, the unit is stretching the pictures (width-wise). To get around this problem do the following:
1) Open the picture with "Paint." This is a pretty basic program that everyone should have.
2) Click "Image."
3) Select "Stretch/Skew" from the pull down menu.
4) Change the horizontal stretch to 73%.
5) Click "ok."
6) Save your file.

Now, when you load these onto the player they will look fine (though they look smashed on your computer). You just smashed your pictures first to compensate for the company's software stretch mistake.

The picture aspect ratio doesn't really matter unless you want to fill the whole frame. In that case, I used an inch ratio (using "picture it") of 3.75" x 6" and then stretched my box. If I didn't change the ratio, my pictures still looked fine -- in fact for some pictures I preferred the "square look."

This frame seemed too good to be true, and it was. While it does accept nearly every type of picture card, play video, photos, and music, and even has internal memory, the picture quality is terrible. The user's manual offers no trouble-shooting tips, nor does the web site. I did discover on the web site that the only format supported is "landscape," which means normal photos are going to be stretched at the sides. Unless you crop all of your pictures to fit the size of the frame, they will be stretched. Even without the stretching, the quality is still poor. I've discovered that when a frame says "sports a high resolution" but does not tell you what the resolution actually is, you probably aren't going to get very good picture quality. Fortunately I bought my frame from a retailer who allowed me to return it, but I'd think twice before buying this frame anywhere that doesn't accept open-box returns.

The basic problem with this device is that it won't display a photo as it was cropped or intended to be displayed in it's native dimensions.

If you add a photo that was cropped to square, it will be rectangular, if you crop it to something where the frame wants it to fit left and right then the person in the photo looks rather FAT! Or if it's a vertical photo it also gets mangled in it's display.

Can't figure out how come this company is unable to fix what ought to be OBVIOUS flaws in it's products. AVOID for Christmas presents! All this will do is make the receiver crazy trying to make the photo display as it should!!!! Unless of course you don't like the person.... Which would make one wonder why you would spend this kind of money on them...but that's another story!

The resolution of this viewer is about that of a good cell phone .. just bigger dots. You cannot control the order of the picture viewing or the speed of viewing.
This company's customer support will not answer their phones. My new NuVue700Plus display failed after one hour, things happen and I can understand that. It took 5 days of emails and phone calls to get a reply from customer support. I was informed that I had to pay shipping and that the item may be replaced by a refurbished unit.

You do not want to buy this product or any product from this company.

Who designed this? I want my pictures to look normal, not stretched and flattened. I just cannot not figure out how this type of product gets to the market place. Did a bunch of 7 foot skinning designers work on this project, and used their picture to test the unit. They must have liked the way they looked squished to 6 feet tall.

Most of us are 5 to 6 feet tall, and when we look 4 to 5 feet tall, and even fatter, well u get the point. The unit is going back.

Bob

On the positive side, the unit is attractive, the picture quality isn't
bad for the price, an MP3 player is a nice idea. However, there are
several gotchas with this unit. First the documentation lists XD as a type
of card the reader will read, but my unit has two slots and XD is not a
listed valid card type. Second the speakers sound kind of tinny. But the
worst problem with the unit is a stretched aspect ratio. The unit is about
6 inches by 3.5 inches making it's aspect 16:9 instead of the usual 4:3
which most cameras produce. Worse, if you feed it a picture whose aspect
ratio is something different it will do some odd resizing to get a 4:3 then
stretch it. Since many photo frames are purchased to display family
pictures this is truely awful. Landscapes look OK stretched, but people
look terrible. You can adjust the photos prior to loading them to your
unit and they'll look pretty good, but it's a pain. If you're interested
I'm including my recipe for that below.

Stretching a photo to be displayed correctly on the NuVue 700 using
Photoshop:

1. The end result needs to be a 4x3 ratio and should be at least
640x480 for best quality display. Larger than that will allow
zooming further in.

From image menu --> image size.
Uncheck "Constrain proportions"
Set the width to the same value as the height. (I'm assuming
you're working with a landscape photo, i.e. wider than tall).

2. Now you have a stretched square.
In image size, check the Constrain proportions. At this point
decide if you have vertical room you can lose in the resized
picture or not. In one case we'll crop the photo but use the
entire display area, in the second case you'll need to add
bars to the sides of the photo and the picture will be displayed
smaller.
Case 1: (Room to crop) Resize the width to 640. Create a
new window 640x480. Select All in the original window and
Copy. In new window paste. Now you can drag the photo
around to find an optimal crop. Flatten layers and save as
a jpeg. It's now ready to load on your photo frame.

Case 2: (No room to crop) Resize the width to 480. Create
a new window 640x480. Fill this window with a color that
will go nicely with your photo. This will be the side bars.
Select All in the original window and Copy. In the new
window paste. Center the photo. Flatten layers and save.

Hope this helps.

I bought this item with high hopes and was dissapointed. I never even got to the loading of photos problems. As soon as I turned this unit on it hissed and crackled like a mustuned radio. Even plugging in headphones does not stop this noise coming from the back of the unit. I think the error message when you try to play a video file from an empty folder sums it all up "Not find file of type to play" Obviously this is some cheap asian crap disguised in a Kodak color schemed box!

Bought this for my folks. Picture is OK, depending upon the resolution, of course, but it takes a lot of tweaking to get it right. Big problem is it CLAIMS, falsely, to be able to store 1400 pictures at 480x360 resolution. Not so. How many did I get onto the Hard Drive? 115. One Hundred and Fifteen. And 115 at this low resolution look terrible for the most part. I called customer service (after having to track down the number on line since they don't offer it in the manual or materials in the box. The person was nice enough, tried himself to get more than 115 photos at that resolution on the drive and was unable. So he said, "Well, that's about all you can get on it." What about the claims of 1400? What about the fact that the drive said it was a fraction full? I don't know, said the customer service rep. I don't know...