11-28-2007, 09:04 AM
I bought the Digital Spectrum Memory Vue 1040 Plus (10.4" diagonal) digital photo frame from Costco for $200 as a birthday present for my Mom. I thought I would load about 1,500 photos onto an unused 1 GB compact flash card to let her enjoy our family pix. Having prior experience of poor quality digital picture frames, I wanted the easy local Costco return policy just in case.
I exported ~1,500 photos from iPhoto using high quality jpeg with high size producing 1280x960 resolution files approx 50-300k in size. After fumbling through the confusing menu settings & buttons for about 5 minutes, I was able to get the pictures displayed.
Pros for this frame:
+ Very nice picture quality. 800x600 resolution provides sharp pictures from a 10 foot viewing distance. Initially, PQ was dark and washed out with default settings, but after tweaking the brightness, contrast, and color temp settings, I was able to get a beautiful, saturated picture.
+ 4x3 aspect ratio is perfect for photo viewing as almost all digicams take 4x3 photos. I can't understand the appeal of wide screen photo frames.
+ Nice looking frame with black & cherry wood bezels. Build quality is a bit weak as the LCD is skewed within the white matte leaving a 1 mm gap on the right bottom.
+ Excellent transitions - about 8 modes including random transitions, although slowest slide switching is still fast at 7 seconds.
Cons:
- No random mode. It is extremely annoying to sit through the same sequential photo display upon every power up.
- At power up, it sits waiting at a media selection menu. Strange - you'd figure it would go straight into displaying photos. Choosing settings recommended in the manual seems to have no effect on this.
- Every power up, in media selection menu, it defaults to internal memory, requiring several button presses to navigate to the CF card & subdirectory.
- 4 buttons on frame side are basically useless.
- Remote has good range, but very poor menu navigation & half of the remote buttons don't appear to do anything.
- Flimsy 6 page manual & worthless support website. No firmware updates mentioned on the website http://www.dsicentral.com
- Flimsy stand as well
- No programmable auto on / off or motion detection to conserve energy & LCD backlight longevity. A simple lamp timer will handle this - clumsy but workable.
Overall:
If this frame only had random photo mode & was able to auto start a slideshow from the CF card upon power on, then I would keep it. However with these limitations, it is going back. Mom will have to wait for this type of gadget to mature.
I exported ~1,500 photos from iPhoto using high quality jpeg with high size producing 1280x960 resolution files approx 50-300k in size. After fumbling through the confusing menu settings & buttons for about 5 minutes, I was able to get the pictures displayed.
Pros for this frame:
+ Very nice picture quality. 800x600 resolution provides sharp pictures from a 10 foot viewing distance. Initially, PQ was dark and washed out with default settings, but after tweaking the brightness, contrast, and color temp settings, I was able to get a beautiful, saturated picture.
+ 4x3 aspect ratio is perfect for photo viewing as almost all digicams take 4x3 photos. I can't understand the appeal of wide screen photo frames.
+ Nice looking frame with black & cherry wood bezels. Build quality is a bit weak as the LCD is skewed within the white matte leaving a 1 mm gap on the right bottom.
+ Excellent transitions - about 8 modes including random transitions, although slowest slide switching is still fast at 7 seconds.
Cons:
- No random mode. It is extremely annoying to sit through the same sequential photo display upon every power up.
- At power up, it sits waiting at a media selection menu. Strange - you'd figure it would go straight into displaying photos. Choosing settings recommended in the manual seems to have no effect on this.
- Every power up, in media selection menu, it defaults to internal memory, requiring several button presses to navigate to the CF card & subdirectory.
- 4 buttons on frame side are basically useless.
- Remote has good range, but very poor menu navigation & half of the remote buttons don't appear to do anything.
- Flimsy 6 page manual & worthless support website. No firmware updates mentioned on the website http://www.dsicentral.com
- Flimsy stand as well
- No programmable auto on / off or motion detection to conserve energy & LCD backlight longevity. A simple lamp timer will handle this - clumsy but workable.
Overall:
If this frame only had random photo mode & was able to auto start a slideshow from the CF card upon power on, then I would keep it. However with these limitations, it is going back. Mom will have to wait for this type of gadget to mature.