Customer Reviews

Philips 7-inch Digital Picture Frame w/Clear Frame

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I bought this for my dad while he was in the hospital and have been extremely pleased with it. The screen is large and bright, and the image quality is comparable to a flat panel monitor (in my opinion at least). It is not fuzzy and all the colors are vibrant. It accepts the major memory card formats. You can also store around 11-12 (usable) MB of photos directly to the device (although the description says 14 MB). Just use the included USB cable and it is basically drag and drop. While 11-12 MB is not a lot, you do not have to use the maximum file size for a photo for it to look its best on the device. I experimented and compared the same photo at 2 MB and at around 350 KB and could not tell the difference in image quality. (I used Apple's iPhoto to reduce the image size.) The device also has a convenient auto on/off feature as well as an option to dim the brightness after 6PM. My only complaint is that the detachable stand that keeps the frame upright doesn't "snap" into place and could slide off if improperly handled. Additionally, the stand is not adjustable so it only has one viewing angle, which is fairly upright. This is just a minor quibble for an otherwise outstanding product. (Actually, I have one more minor complaint. While there is a helpful printed quick start guide, the actual manual is on a CD. I couldn't access the CD on my Apple (I presume it is intended for PCs only), but I figured everything out on my own so I don't consider this a big deal.) The nursing staff loved it and inquired about buying one for themselves.

EDIT: I recently realized the detachable stand actually does "snap" into place. It just takes an extra twist.

I bought one of these frames after seeing one at a friend's house. The clear / white acrylic design is like so many Apple knockoffs at the moment that it could be called iFrame.
Either way it's a nice product. The screen is crisp and clear and loading up the photos is pretty easy but there's a couple of gotchas that the documentation don't really clarify.
First, if you use a memory card - by far the most preferable way of doing it - the photos must be in a standard digital imaging folder. For example DCIM\100MSDCF. Once your photos are in there, they must be a standard digital imaging name, such as DSCF00023. Photos with names like "my cat.jpg" won't be read.
And secondly, whilst the frame is capable of rotating pictures stored in its internal memory, it can't do them directly off the memory cards. My tip : rotate them to the correct orientation before uploading them to the card.
Apart from those two little quibbles, the frame seems to be working out just great for us. Because the screen is a relatively low resolution - 720x480 - I scaled down copies of a lot of my photos to 50% of the size they came out of the camera. I've managed to get abou 120 photos on to a 64Mb memory card and the Philips frame has had no problems reading any of them.
It has a couple of timed features which are nice. You can tell it to automatically turn on and off at particular times of day, and you can tell it to dim the brightness of the display at night (at user-defined times). So for example, ours is set to dim the display at 7pm, and turn off at 11pm, to come on at full brightness again at 8am. It's a nice suite of features which adds to this quality little product.

I received the Philips Digital Photo Frame a few weeks ago. After loading some of my pictures into it, I was immediately impressed by how well it displayed my photos despite the frames resolution limitation of 720 x 540. The screen also has impressively high contrast; blacks are very black and whites are very white. There is an interesting side effect to the screens high contrast; many photos actually have a layered look to them that simulates depth in the photos. To me that is very impressive.

The frame makes transferring images to it quite easy. You can either connect it directly to your computer via a USB cable or you can use any of a variety of flash memory cards (SD, Smart Media, etc.). But what is really nice about the process of transferring your photos to the frame is that when you go to transfer them it automatically adjusts the image's size to fit into the 720 x 540 pixel limitation of the frame. You don't have to do any resizing to save space on the frame, you simply choose which photos you want to transfer over and let the frame do the rest.

The frames operation can be customized to do a random slide show or to go through your photos in order. It also uses various types of wipes to transition between your photos. The delay between photos can be adjusted anywhere from 5 seconds to a full day. One of the most import features though is that you set a on and off time for it so you can trust that it isn't running during the day when you aren't at home to look at it.

Overall, I have been very impressed with this frame. The picture quality has proved to be exemplary and I found it very easy to set up. The only thing I can find that I would like to improve is to make the auto on/off feature a bit more customizable. It would be better if it would allow you to set different times for different days. However, that is a pretty small concern.

Very cool device! Photo quality is excellent, and had no problems with Slideshow mode, after some trial and error. No loss in photo quality, even when compressing 6 megpixel pictures (~2.2MB) down to 4x6 @140k per picture! (did this with the wdpv.exe tool..see other comments in an earlier review).

I read all the previous reviews, so I understood the known caveats. I bought two of these units for different (computer challenged) family members on the east coast. My strategy is to keep it real simple for them:

- Avoid *any* connectivity to a PC
- Pre-configure all the settings
- Pre-load firmware updates (one need it)
- Avoid puting pictures in the frames memory. Only use external memory cards
- Provide them with a memory card loaded with pictures
- I will send them an updated memory card with additional pictures via the mail, and they will send me back the old one, so I can keep recycling the same memory cards for future updates
-Provide instructions how to swap the memory cards

USING PRO DUO MEMORY CARD: I chose to use the SanDisk 256mb Pro Duo cards. Lower cost, and can hold way over 1000 pictures. After saving 266 pictures @ ~130k/picture, I've barely used 15% of the 256mb. BTW, I also had major problems using an older memory card that uses the wider slot (CF?). I was getting intermittent problems in reading the card or running the slideshow (it would suddenly freeze). Since I had no problems using the Pro Duo memory w/ adapter sleeve (I use'em for other Sony cameras at home), I stuck to that.

PHOTO FILE NAMING CAVEATS: Took me hours and hours to figure out the caveats with the naming convention specifics for (Sony?) DCIM, etc etc. This is how photo files are named on the memory card. Manditory to understand this. You should read about it in other threads, but remember:

-File names ARE case sensitive, even though windows is generally not! File name DSC00022.JPG is not the same as dsc00022.jpg
-Files must be saved in the proper folder names on the memory card.
-File must start with DSC0 followed by 4 digits.

Mess up on any of these, and you're photos will not be viewable on the frame, and you will spend hours bonking your head on the wall. Yeah, don't expect ANY help from Philips documentation or web site.

PHOTO REDUCTION RESOLUTION: Regarding the wdpv.exe program, it's great for compression, but fails to rename files properly (to my liking) after compressing them. I wanted to have the new file names be of proper case and numerical sequence (so they will display in sequential order), so I found another freeware program to take care of this. A bit more work up front, but worth it in the long run.

I also found that I had to play around with various photo reduction sizes to get the fit I desired. They have a "Philips" mode, but I think I had to also find my own resolution that allowed a 4x6 picture that did not leave a black bar at top & bottom. In place, I chose to expanded the photos a bit more, so there is very slight loss on the left & right boarders, but the picture looks bigger and makes better use of the frame size.

Good Luck! Great Product, features and size.

This is a frame that finally puts decent pixel resolution (720 x480) and a TFT into a 6" x 4" frame. It's what I had been waiting for, so when it came out at the end of last year, I snapped one up. I have not been disappointed. I use the compact flash card to hold my photos, and with a 256 MB card, I can put > 1000 photos on it. It's perfect for the office if you have children and take lots of digital pictures of them. I highly recommend the wdpv.exe program at <a href="http://willus.com/archive">http://willus.com/archive</a> to put your photos on this frame. It will size them down automatically so that you can fit the maximum number on a card. It also has a special switch just for this model.

I read a lot of reviews here and elsewhere, and ordered this product with some trepidation, knowing it claimed to have exactly the features I was looking for in the product, but also being aware of the problems others reported about it. But I have to report that it has worked like a dream for me right out of the box. I followed the advice in other reviews to use WDPV.exe and Cropit.exe (Entrysoft) to crop and reduce my photos before loading them onto the frame. I used the USB cable supplied with the frame and the software included, and in one bulk drag-and-drop, was able to transfer 105, yes - 105- photos into the frame's internal memory. (I deleted the images already loaded from the factory first.) Worked like a charm, nothing hung up, I didn't have to do any file renaming (other than the renaming WDPV did automatically), the pictures look stunning and the slideshow keeps chugging away. The menu buttons are intuitive, to me at least. It turned itself off at the specified time, and turned itself on in the morning with the slideshow running as expected. No need to restart anything, at least so far. I popped in a memory card, and it immediately started running the pictures on it, returning to the internal slideshow when the card was removed. I think the caution others reported about not putting in a memory card until after the frame has fully powered on is a good one, though, so that it doesn't try to load pictures from the card to its internal memory. Yes, the documentation is skimpy and not written by native speakers of English. But at least so far, it has worked fairly straightforwardly without the need for recourse to in-depth documentation. I can't yet speak to the longevity of the product, but I have to say the initial experience has made me want to get them for everyone on my list. (I hope they're not reading this!)

I bought this frame based on Amazon reviews as part of an anniversary present to my wife. Everyone who sees it in our display case LOVES it! Pictures are very clear and having a built-in timer is actually pretty cool. The main selling point for me was that the frame has an internal battery so my wife can disconnect it and bring it with her to show people. In our experience, the battery never lasts the 1 hour its supposed to - more like 30-40 minutes - but its still better than having to bring the adapter and look for a power outlet. I also chose this frame over some of the wooden frames since my wife takes the frame out sometimes (throws it in a bag), I didn't want the frame to show signs of wear so I chose this one for that express purpose.

The software is a little quirky though. We don't use the built in memory, just a SD card, to feed pictures to the frame. When we add/delete pictures from the card, some pictures won't appear and some that were deleted still appear. I'm assuming the frame copied some of the pictures to its internal memory but neither of us can figure out how not to trigger that from happening and to make the frame just use the card.

All in all, very nice frame and if you're a hubby like me - you'll be glad you bought one for your wife for all the 'kudos' you'll get for this great gift idea.

I gave this to my 80 yr old mother for her birthday. She said it was the best gift she's ever received. It kept her transfixed for an hour, and now she brings it to the neighbors (power supply and all) and makes them all watch the fabulous pictures of her grandchildren.

It was very easy uploading pictures from my computer. It comes with 2 USB interface cables. It simply showed up as an external drive and I dragged and dropped pix. Mom wasn't content with my supply of pix, so she simply took the SD flash card out of her digital camera and popped it into the back of the picture frame. Now she can create a slide show of her own pix without any fuss.

We still haven't figured out all the options, but even low-res pix are vivid and clear.

I wanted to be able to show pictures from our most recent trips to family and friends at parties. This was the only frame I found that could operate on batteries AND has wonderful resolution and colors. A bonus is the batteries are built in and rechargeable!

The frame's stand is attractive, heavy-duty metal -- but easily twists off when I want to pass the frame around a group. This reduces the total weight to little more than a regular picture frame.

TIP: I load 130-180 of my favorite pictures back from my computer onto one of my digital camera Memory Sticks. I reload this stick after every trip. Do NOT insert the stick into the frame until AFTER you turn it on, AND it displays one of the pictures in it's own memory. THEN insert the stick and start your own slideshow. If you turn on the frame with the memory stick installed, it trys to download into a memory area that can only hold 6-8 pictures. It overloads and jams the whole system.

As I am in the process of scanning all of my families print photographs for digital conservation I decided it would be nice to be able to display them all on a picture frame. It's a lot of pictures (around 600 at the moment), but if I shrink the size (since the screen is only 720X480 anyways) using a program like irfanview the size is not very big (150 megs or so depending on quality settings).

BE WARNED. The SD slot on this device does not work very well. It does not NOT support FAT32 Formatted SD cards which means no matter the size you cannot load more than 127 images (FAT file limitation). Also, despite Phillips claims after my several trips to best buy to try different SD/CF cards it will NOT support anything larger than a gig. If you want to be able to display a large number of photographs you can do it but need to use a CF card (it will support FAT32 CF cards) with a large number of images (as many as you can fit).

Other than this, the device does what its expected. The screen is definately a little smaller than it should be (as another reviewer noted) but thats not uncommon on monitor screens. The on/off on a timer and dimmer features are nice. Overall I'd recommend it but be warned, the documentation is horrible and if you try and call philips for help they know NOTHING about how things works or how it should. I had to figure all this out on my own and it took me quite a while.