|
| Philips 6.5-Inch Digital Picture Frame (White) | 
 enlarge
| Brand: Philips
Category: Photography
List Price: $199.99
Buy Refurbished: $102.40
You Save: $97.59 (49%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  71 reviews
Color: White
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.7
Dimensions (in): 10 x 6 x 8
MPN: 7FF1CMI/37
Model: 7FF1CMI/37
UPC: 609585126787
EAN: 0718122065608
ASIN: B000HWS0NU
Release Date: September 1, 2006
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Good, but with irritating flaws November 26, 2007
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
Summary: This is basically a good product, albeit with some flaws that will drive you crazy and make you waste hours of your time if you are not aware of them beforehand.
First of all, note that this review is for the Philips Photo Frame with the 7FF1CMI/37 model number. I say this up front because if you go to the Philips web site, and then click on "Contact & Support", and then search on "photo frame", you'll find that there are gobs of models whose ID numbers are all the same, except for some small variation. My guess is that every time Philips releases another model, someone tells them about some idiotic flaw, which they (hopefully) fix, and then they release the same product under a slightly new model number.
Also, I'd like to mention that I discovered too late (before I mailed this unit off to my Dad for his birthday) that the support page on Philips' website offers a firmware update, dated 02/07/2007. Maybe that update addresses some of the problems that I talk about below; I wish I knew.
Anyway, this digital frame is essentially a good product. When it displays pictures, they are automatically resized to fit properly within the 720x540 pixel display, and the colors are brighter and more vibrant than what appears on my PC's monitor. You can configure the pictures to switch from once every 5 seconds to once a day, and most everything in between. It's easy to transfer pictures from your PC to the frame's internal memory, and the unit can accept a few different types of memory cards. I have a 1 GB SD card containing two folders of picture file: one folder of pictures in landscape (horizontal) format, and one folder of pictures in portrait (vertical) format.
Now, then, are the irritations. First of all, you'd expect any decent unit of this type to be able to display pictures in any of the typical, common file formats in use today: .JPG, .BMP, .GIF, and .PNG at the very least. Uh-ah. This unit only recognizes files with the .JPG extension -- and it can't even display all files of that type. On my SD memory card, I had a number of picture files where I used the photo-enhancing software that came with my HP scanner. The Philips frame was unable to display any of those files, even though they were perfectly good .JPG files that any other application on my PC could open. I was only able to get around this problem by opening each of those files in my generic image viewer/editor (IrfanView) and re-saving them.
The next most irritating phenomenon I experienced was in the mode that displays images as thumbnails. A number of my portrait-oriented pics showed up as being rotated 180 degrees off; i.e. upside-down. I went through the trouble of re-opening and re-saving all of these in IrfanView, then re-writing all of them to the memory card -- but they still appeared 180 degrees off when viewed in the Photo Frame's thumbnail mode. However, I ultimately discovered that they appeared in the correct orientation when viewed in Browse or Slideshow mode.
One last quirk that I must mention. As mentioned above, the dimension of the photo frame's screen is 720 pixels by 540 pixels, which equates to a 4:3 aspect ratio. My phone cam takes pictures that are of a different aspect ratio, maybe 3:2. When these pictures are displayed on the Philips 7FF1CMI/37, black areas appear on the top & bottom, or left & right, depending on whether the pic is in portrait or landscape orientation. It's like when you watch a widescreen movie on your standard screen TV, or vice versa, and it's to be expected. However, after I cropped all of those pictures so that they resulted in a 4:3 aspect ratio, some of them displayed properly on the Photo Frame as expected -- and some did not (i.e., they still had black "letterbox" bars on either side, although I could re-verify those pics as being in a 4:3 aspect ratio.)
I'd recommend the Philips Photo Frame to you, as long as you are cognizant of the above shortcomings -- which might or might not be fixed by downloading and installing the firmware update that I mentioned above. I apologize that I was not able to do that before shipping out the unit as a birthday present.
P.S. --
By the way, in contrast to the experience that some other folks have reported here, I can insert my SD card with the unit turned on or turned off, and it will read the card and react appropriately. But note that if you have inserted a memory card, the unit will then ignore any pictures you may have stored in its internal memory.
 I love my picture frame November 26, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
My boyfriend gave me this frame for a birthday present and I couldn't have been more pleased. It is the first thing that I turn on in the morning and the last to go off at night. It is also not gigantic so it easily fits in my tiny dorm room.
Philips not up to their usual quality & performance... November 14, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Well designed, beautiful images, great warranty.
Would not read a 4GB SD card. Would not read a CF card containing more than about 400 images. Technical support didn't have a clue. They sent me a replacement unit which turned out to be a refurb with a bad smudge on the screen. I have returned both units. I have purchased many Philips items over the years and have always appreciated their innovation and quality. This was my worst experience with them. I'm very disappointed.
 Don't Repeat My Bad Experience November 10, 2007
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I could make this a really long story, but I will spare you. The short of it is:
This unit will not read a 4G Sandisk SDHC memory card, regardless of what "technical support" tells you.
The metal kick stand on the unit weighs about a pound, and drops off everytime I pick the unit up off the table (very annoying).
If you ask for a replacement, you will be sent a "refurbished" unit. Mine came missing a part. So now I have two units that I am dissatisfied with.
I was told to call back on Monday to talk to a different department about how to return the refurbished unit, and I still have to return the one I ordered from Amazon.
Nothing against Amazon, because I buy a ton of stuff from them, but if you are still thinking you want to try this product, I would recommend that you buy it locally so that you can just return it to the store if you have any issues and not have to try to work with Phillip's technical support.
Good luck.
Good buy October 21, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Great frame for a good price. Easy to use right out of the box. No complaints other than needing to buy a bigger memory card.
|
|
|
| |
