Customer Reviews

8" Digital Photo Frame

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

 

 

I picked up 3 of these during the Black Friday sale. They are advertised as 8", but they are a strange 8". I am tempted to say they are 7", but I measured it. It's about 4" tall and 7" wide, but diagonally the screen comes out to 8". It makes the photos look funny because that's not a standard photo size. The resolution is low, but most of the digital photo frames in this price range are the same way.

There is no internal memory, so you will have to buy an SD card (or take the one out of your camera, if you use one). I agree with some other reviews that I've read, that these low-res frames are best for showing off family snapshots; if you want to display high quality images, look for a higher-resolution frame. It also doesn't have some of the other bells and whistles of higher-priced frames... there isn't a remote control and it doesn't play music.

Edit: When I edited my photos so that they were cropped to 4.25" high and 7.25" wide with 300 ppi resolution, the quality of the photos on the screen appeared (more) clear and well-fit to the screen.

We also purchased the Venturer at Wal-Mart, note Amazon price is the same. The photo frame is perfect for me. Very simple design, no remote to loose and accepts my SD card. We have SD cards laying around here everywhere so I found a 16 M card from the closet and it worked perfect. Note, don't waste memory using pictures of 1 M in size, with this viewer you will not notice the difference. We also tried a PanDigital 6 inch and next to the Venturer. The Venturer picture was significantly better and the price was 35 % less for the Venturer. Don't let the simple Venturer packaging fool you. We are going to buy another Venturer for the family.. This time from Amazon. :)

We bought a Venturer dpf811se on Black Friday 2007 at Walmart too. Our decision to purchase was completely impulsive and based on the cheap price, $50. Moreover, we had done no research as to what features make a good digital frame; aside from asking other Black Friday shoppers why they were buying one of these digital frames.

The advertised size is somewhat deceptive. From corner to corner the screen measures 7 7/8 inches. The vertical and horizontal dimensions of the screen measure 3 11/16 inches high x 7 inches wide. So, the screen is very long, almost too long and definitely not tall enough. You really get a roughly 3 ¾ tall and 5 ½ wide picture when displaying in a normal aspect ratio photo of 3:4. Small. Other digital frames from other companies have better aspect ratios, but they also cost much more ($80 plus). The cord to plug into an outlet is only 4 feet 10 inches long which is too short.

The Venturer dpf811se's screen is somewhat grainy. Some lines in the photos are not sharp, they have edgies. However, the color is smooth and not pixilated. The colors are bright and vibrant. The edge of the screen lightens the colors of the photos, definitely a mild flaw. The pictures are not as sharp as I had hoped, but they still look nice. I like the black plastic frame around the screen.

To view the images on the screen it is best to look from right in front of the Digital Frame, as the screen can washout light or dark from to far of an angle. A better quality screen would be easily noticed next to the dpf811se. I did try changing the images' size and DPI in an effort to decrease the artifacts in the images when displayed. I noticed no improvement when size or DPI was changed.

The dpf811se does boot up quickly enough, the menu system is ok, and the transitions are ok, some of the transition effects were too blocky for me. Just putting the transitions on fade was the most attractive.

Venturer dpf811se represents the low end of the market for digital frames. So, as long as you are not picky the Venturer dpf811se will perform as expected. For those that notice details, currently the low end of the digital frame market doesn't offer the level of visual quality that you would be satisfied with.

Used once, the next day-it stopped working. Don't buy this product. Not worth your money.

I made that mistake; don't waste your money on Venturer junk - worst customer service I can remember (well, if you buy Venturer you are going to need it).

This is a very low-end frame. Picked this up at WalMart on black friday 2007. Returned it after comparing with an identical priced unit from Target that essentially had more features/less issues.

Primarily the display is poor resolution. Regardless of the inflated walmart claims of 640x480, it doesn't really have that much resolution. Not only is the screen grainy due to the pixel size, since it appears it's an analog conversion, much like a portable DVD player, the resulting images look like you are watching a DVD on an old-fashioned CRT television, not a nice laptop LCD screen. In other words, soft/blurry and also shimmering. Newer and more expensive panels now are all-digital, not going through this conversion, and using better quality panels with better resolution and viewing angles.

Also the viewing angles are poor. If you tilt the screen slightly up or down, the image quickly washes out or goes negative. Therefore someone standing in your living room will see a different image than someone sitting.

One benefit this unit does have is that it has many transition effects that other panels didn't seem to offer, things like window blinds, complete side push/wipe, displaying the new image in black and white then wiping color across it, and a few diagonal pixelation ones (though those took forever to draw creating annoying wait times).

The last benefit was that it allowed you to select if you wanted 4:3 material stretched to 16:9 or not. Some other ones always force the image stretched which looks bad, so you have to pre-edit your pictures to include black bars if you want them to look good.

This picture frame worked good when I first got it but it did not work very long. I had one like it before and that is why I ordered it. It lasted way longer than the one I got from Amazon. It just quit working in less than a year. I wouldn't recomend this one.

This digital photo frame is attractive and does a fine job of displaying your family photos. It's great for a gift for Grandma - simple to use and large enough to see easily.