Tech Test Drive: Some glaring,
but fixable, problems persist in
digital photo frames
BY MIKE LANGBERG
Mercury News Personal Technology Editor
A whole world of cool new gadgets is just out of reach, strangled by
the lack of affordable, high-quality color LCD screens.
LCDs, or liquid crystal displays, are used in everything from laptop
computers to automatic teller machines and are in very short supply at
the moment. So prices are way up, in turn driving up the cost of new
products that require an LCD screen.
This manufacturing bottleneck, I believe, explains why the new
category I call ``connected digital picture frames'' isn't quite ready for
the mass market.
The Kodak Smart Picture Frame (www.kodak.com/go/smartframe), just now reaching stores,
shows what I mean: It's too expensive at $349, while the LCD screen is too small at 5 inches wide by
4 inches high.
Developed for Kodak by Silicon Valley start-up Weave Innovations (www.weaveinnovations.com),
the Smart Frame is also hobbled by several poor design and marketing decisions.
The good news is that all these problems are fixable.
New LCD production plants in Asia are expected to come on line in the next year or two, which
should bring the price of LCDs down -- making it possible to sell less expensive connected digital
picture frames with bigger screens.
With the right product at the right price, I expect connected frames could become the next hot
techno-toy in our increasingly wired nation.
Amateur photography, as I've said repeatedly in previous columns, is becoming digital. Digital
cameras, which store images electronically instead of using film, are now popular and affordable, with
decent entry-level models as low as $200. Pictures taken on film are easily made electronic, through
services such as Kodak's Picture CD or with inexpensive home flatbed scanners.
Once you have a picture in digital form, you can effortlessly share the image as an electronic-mail
attachment or by posting it to a Web page.
But these forms of sharing require the recipient to be sitting in front of a computer -- not the best
venue for enjoying snapshots from a friend's vacation or memories from the family reunion picnic.
The connected frame gets you away from the computer.
Resembling a conventional tabletop picture frame, a connected frame has an LCD screen in the
center instead of a paper photograph. The frame has a built-in modem and, when plugged into a
phone line, can receive and display pictures. Users select a time -- typically in the middle of the night
-- when the frame automatically dials a service to check for new pictures; users can also tell the
frame to make an immediate call if they know new pictures are waiting.
Connected frames, then, could be the ultimate Grandma and Grandpa gift. Parents who are taking
digital pictures of their children could buy a connected frame for the grandfolks in another state,
frequently updating the frame with new pictures. Grandma and Grandpa don't need any computer
expertise; they just check the frame every morning to see if anything has arrived.
The first such connected frame was introduced at the beginning of the year by another start-up, Ceiva
Logic (www.ceiva.com). I reviewed the Ceiva frame back in February and was very impressed by
the concept, but was put off by the frame's relatively high price -- it currently sells for $299, including
one year of service -- and low-quality 6-inch by 4.5-inch LCD screen.
Ceiva has so far only managed to get limited distribution for its frame, mostly selling through online
vendors. Kodak, in contrast, has the clout to get massive distribution for its Smart Picture Frame,
which should be widely available in electronics and photography stores by early November.
Kodak and Weave have also out-designed Ceiva.
The Ceiva frame is a bland black wood box, with the word ``Ceiva'' crassly stamped in half-inch tall
letters on the front. The Kodak frame is polished cherry wood, with the word ``Kodak'' discretely
burned into the lower right corner -- although I think both companies are wrong to stick their names
on something as personal as a picture frame.
Kodak's frame has a bright and sharp active-matrix LCD screen displaying images at 640 by 480
pixels, significantly better than the passive-matrix screen in the Ceiva frame -- although, as I said
above, I found the Kodak screen too small.
And the Kodak frame has a slot for inserting the Compact Flash memory cards used by many digital
cameras. Digital camera owners can take a memory card out of a camera, stick it in the frame and
view pictures immediately -- without the time-consuming intermediate steps of loading them into a
computer and then sending them to Weave's StoryBox Network (www.storybox.com) site for
transmission to the frame.
Of course, this only works for digital cameras built around CF cards. Among the four biggest
manufacturers of consumer digital cameras, Kodak and Nikon use CF, while Olympus and Sony use
other memory-card formats.
I borrowed a Kodak frame and found it easy to set up; all I had to do was plug the frame into an AC
outlet and a phone jack. A row of five buttons along the top of the frame let me access a command
menu for selecting which pictures to display and how often to cycle through them; the frame has eight
megabytes of internal memory that can store up to 36 pictures.
I also had to register my frame with the StoryBox Network, which requires signing up for monthly
service with a credit card. The easiest way to do this is by filling out forms on StoryBox's Web site,
although frame owners without a computer can sign up by calling a toll-free number and talking to a
human operator.
I filled the frame with several pictures of my daughter Sara, widely acclaimed as the most beautiful
baby of all time since her birth Aug. 1, by uploading them to the StoryBox site and by transferring
from the CF card in my Nikon Coolpix 950 digital camera.
Working through these steps, however, showed me several serious problems Kodak and Weave
should quickly resolve.
The biggest mistake is a plastic anti-glare shield installed on top of the LCD screen. The shield makes
the pictures look fuzzy -- somewhat like deliberately putting a cataract on the surface of a healthy
eyeball. The 62-page user guide included with the frame makes no mention of the shield, which can
be easily removed. I only discovered the shield when I called a Weave Innovations executive to
complain about the frame's poor image quality. Buyers of the Kodak frame -- unless they've read this
column -- won't know about the shield or how to remove it.
I was also put off by the complicated service plans devised by Kodak and Weave. The frame's $349
purchase price includes six months of service, but after that buyers must pay for transmitting pictures
to and from the frame.
A basic plan at $4.95 a month or $57 per year allows two update phone calls a day to collect new
pictures. A deluxe plan at $9.95 a month or $99 a year allows four update calls. Additional updates
are 10 cents each on the basic plan and five cents on the deluxe.
StoryBox Network also provides information ``channels'' for the frame, such as weather forecasts,
news headlines and sports scores. You can choose to have these channels pop up on the screen in
rotation with your pictures; the basic plan provides a menu of five channels, while the deluxe plan
offers ten.
I found all these provisions confusing, and the pricing excessive. Most users, I suspect, would be
happy if the frame connected to the StoryBox Network once a day to collect new pictures. There
should be a budget plan at, say, $2 or $3 a month for such undemanding customers.
Finally, I was annoyed that Kodak is pushing hard for frame owners to buy photographic prints. When
you hit the ``menu'' button on the frame, you go to a screen where the command ``Order Prints'' is
already highlighted.
But images in the frame are low-resolution files in the JPEG format, typically in the range of 100 to
200 kilobytes. That's enough for displaying on a LCD screen, but not enough to make
photographic-quality prints.
Kodak and Weave have made arrangements that in some cases will allow users to put high-resolution
images on the StoryBox site for print orders, while low-resolution versions of the same images are
sent to the frame. But most users won't use the service that way, so prints won't be top quality.
So here's my agenda for Kodak and Weave: Don't install the anti-glare shield in your frames; make it
an accessory in the box that customers can add if they so desire. Simplify the service plan.
De-emphasize print ordering, and explain clearly to customers how to get prints from high-resolution
files.
The bigger issue of LCD size and frame cost could take care of itself. I'd be interested in buying a
connected digital picture frame if the screen measured 7 inches by 5 inches or more, and the frame
cost under $200. That's not achievable today, but I'm hoping I won't have to wait more than a year or
two. |
