Digital Photo Frame Overview

What are Digital Picture Frames?

Digital Picture Frames are gadgets used for sharing photographs with family and friends. A digital frame almost exactly resembles a regular photo frame, except it can display slideshows of pictures on its LCD screen. When digital photo frames first arrived in the market, the digital picture frame would only be able to display photos from a camera's memory card or update itself periodically using the internet; however, technology has now made it possible for you to upload multiple images on to the frame itself or to a USB drive attachable to the frame.

Common Digital Picture Frame Features

Perhaps the most common feature of all photo frames is the slideshow, where pictures are slid in and out of view at a certain time interval you can adjust. Frames from the less expensive side of the spectrum tend to have a minimal feature set, focusing mainly on displaying JPEGs and EXIFs.

However, companies such as Kodak and Ceiva have pioneered in bringing users a much improved host of features with bigger price tags. One such feature is multimedia support, with some newer models sporting media players for playing back MP3 audio, movie clips and even full-length MPEG files.

Frames that come equipped with wireless internet capabilities also allow you to download pictures and certain other multimedia formats from the internet; previously, you’d only be allowed to do this from the manufacturer’s own service (ex: Kodak EasyShare Gallery) but now, images can be retrieved from sources like RSS feeds, image-hosting websites etc. If none of these options humor you, you will also find that a good number of frames house a few megabytes of inbuilt memory where your photos can be stored. Also, most frames feature USB slots for additional storage by way of memory cards.

How to get your images on the digital photo frame

Unless you can afford pricey models, you'll find that Digital frames typically include very little inbuilt memory (in the range of a few megabytes), leaving you with the option of either plugging in your camera’s memory card, or updating photos in your frame via the internet. For the latter, you generally need to subscribe to your manufacturer’s online photo-sharing service. Kodak provides the EasyShare Gallery which is free of cost and Ceiva charges $50 per year for a similar service. Once you connect your frame to the internet (either through dialup or wireless), it should automatically begin downloading new photos added to your gallery.

Your other options for getting images on your frame are USB drives and inbuilt storage. As mentioned above, inbuilt storage is a rarity among digital frames but where available, the manufacturer provides software for frame-computer synchronization. If you’re going to use the USB drive option, the frame does not load the images into its own memory but displays them from the drive itself.

What to look for when purchasing a digital picture frame

Before you decide on which digital frame is best for you, it’s important that you do a fair amount of research on the options at hand. First of all, you should realize that the digital frame industry is budget-sensitive, meaning the more money you’re willing to squeeze out, the more features you’re going to get. Nevertheless, here’s a list of features that you should most definitely look for, regardless of spend:

  • Moderate to huge variety of supported image formats
  • Fast internet connection (good dialup, wireless etc.)
  • Free/Paid online photo-sharing service. How much does it cost?
  • Good support for USB drives
  • Decent onboard storage
  • Power options: does the frame only run on direct AC or are  batteries included?
  • 1-3 year warranty
  • Proven customer support.
 
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