With all the digital pictures for the camera last year, almost all of them will never see print. This is a good thing. It moves clutter to inside the computer. However, recent digital technology lets you share the pictures much more easily. It would be nice to have a picture frame that cook troll this huge backlog of pics and make them more useful. So, why can’t I share my digital pics with a digital picture frame. I could if I wanted to pay as much for a new digital camera.
WTF, is going on with this space? A keychain 1 inch frame is $20, but a 7 inch is $100+. Most likely, $150. Apparently, we have all been mislead. The expensive part of the digital camera is the LCD window. The rest of it, card reader, motion stabilization, flash, CCD amount to a tiny portion of the cost. Oh, wait that can’t be right because those mobile DVD players with a 7 inch screen are ~$100.
A digital picture frame has plenty of drawbacks, mainly the cord. Also, inability to see it from side angles, can’t see it in sunny locations, likelihood of failure (2-3 yr?), the backlight will make it glow, and the loss of one of your memory cards inside the picture frame ($40/gig). Now the silly thing costs close to $200. I could buy a 19 inch LCD monitor for that. You can buy small TVs for that.
I want a $60, 7 inch digital picture frame to show pics change once per hour, half-day, day, week, month with almost no electicity. Not an mp3 playing, movie playing, wireless networked, microcomputer with tiny display.
My guess is that a licensing deal exists which causes them to pay way to much money to a fat a bloated patent holder, like Bluetooth. Nobody likes a $50 tax except Apple people. Or could be the lack of a chip to read SD cards and drive the LCD. Maybe the only one out there is does everything so the mfr, covering his bases, thinks he should plug all those feature in.
What we need is a Walkman to point out that you don’t need to do everything just one thing. Walkman’s don’t have reverse or record. Just fast forward and play.
Many frames have a read anything card reader, but this is unnecessary. They make $5-10 USB adapters for all types of cards. Use either SD (the most popular) or USB. Needs a setting for freqency of picture change, brightness, and that’s about it. More features can go with the higher end frames (almost all current frames). USB is ultra cheap (Mfrs didn’t want to pay the Apple tax for Firewire). Adapters are ultra cheap. To do anything special like a add/remove photos use a computer with USB drive and Windows Explorer (ie one from the last 10yr). This would give a new life for all those old 16, 32, 64 meg cards that ship with the camera. The target should be <$100 with adapter for a 7 inch frame, ideally $60.