Pandigital's PAN-150 digiframe hits the 15-inch mark
By Darren Murph 
posted April 17th 2007 11:34PM
posted April 17th 2007 11:34PM
posted April 17th 2007 11:34PM
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Okay, that's probably the first photo frame I'd even consider getting. The fact that it has a very respectable resolution, nice size and classy frame really sells it. The price--not so much. It'll be a couple more years before these things drop down in price enough to really take off.
I agree with Darnell. Ditto.
So why do they have mp3 playback but no wi-fi? I'd love to just point it to a folder on my desktop and let it go. Instead we have to load up a card and sneakernet it over to the frame. What a waste.
I know it would bump the price up (unless you already had a spare) and probably ruin the aesthetic but could you get a USB wi-fi dongle to work in that built-in USB port?
anyone notice that the picture is of a family taking a picture of themselves...? odd.
Why are 15" monitors like 100 bucks now and 15" photo frames commanding a premium 299? This has gotta change before they make any significant market penetration.
A 15" monitor simply displays a signal sent to it from an external source. A digital photo frame has to not only store images/video, but read them from memory, process and format them for display and THEN send them to the display. Add to the monitor the cost of storage, processor/decoder, card reader/input, audio out as well as a remote control and the price looks a lot less unreasonable.
It's not as though they took an old 15" monitor, did up a nice frame for it, and bumped up the price by 200%.
My biggest pet peeve with current picture frames is the resolution. Second would be the screen size. This frame looks like we're moving in a good direction.
A monitor is just a part of a digital photoframe. Therefore the costs are also higher. Normally the material costs of the LCD panel is about one third. If you add the other components (PCB, outside frame etc.), you pretty much get to the 300$. A digital picture frame is almost a computer and not just a displaying device.
http://www.digital-photo-frame-market.info
Does anyone have any thoughts about user interfaces? I don't think it's good enough to just plug in a memory card and have it cycle through the pictures with a fixed delay; you need some way to navigate. I haven't seen any frames with a touch-screen; that would add to the cost, and you don't want to get fingerprints all over it, and it might be out of reach. What about an IR remote? Or maybe, if you have WiFi, you just control it from your PC?
As for the price: if you've spent $x on your camera, perhaps you should expect to pay c * $x on a decent frame. (Compare with the cost of a good quality photo printer, perhaps.) And the size: still a bit small, I think.
Most of the digital photo frames now have ir remote control. As for the touch-screen, that would be a good idea, however, I haven't heard of that before.
http://www.digital-photo-frame-market.info
The question is what processor is being used, and is it just customer firmware?
What we need is one of these capable of running some form of linux, then we can add drivers for USB Wifi sticks, access all our photos on our local NAS boxes (for the Engadget readers who have them) and access your favourite photo sharing site for the rest of the consumers, companies like Google could add a YouTube extension to display your favourite YouTube videos, the list is endless. And all for $299 or less :)
I have one of the MemoryFrame Wifi frames which when it worked was great, unfortunately the support from the company has been dire, and I wouldn't recommend anyone should buy one, especially if you are running Vista, as they don't support it.
Acer? used to have a monitor with a built-in card reader for this very purpose.
Said card reader worked without a PC turned on.
Just add this functionally to a some of the existing monitors, I say.
anyone else think it would be cheaper to just, you know, print out the image? Why anyone would pay $299 to display a picture is beyond me.
I'm planning to dust off my old ThinkPad A21p and turn it into a digital picture frame... it's also 15", but the resolution is 1600x1200 :).
Pandigital actually does have WiFi options, as well as Bluetooth, coming in May. Dean Finnegan, the CEO of Pandigital, mentioned this and a lot more (including their sales figures for 2006 and expectations for 2007) in an interview I did with him recently: http://www.wirelesspictureframe.com/2007/04/05/interview-with-dean-finnegan-pandigital/
Doesn't anyone think that these gadgets are a massive waste of resources? 1. To make them. 2. To keep them running. As greatslack says, print it out. It'll be much higher resolution, much cheaper and much less of a burden on the environment.
I don't think they are a waste of resources. As economist I would say, the market regulates that by itself. If the market demands those products and consumers see more value created than resources used, than it is not waste to produce digital picture frames.
http://www.digital-photo-frame-market.info
Where can I buy one of these?
I'm with Joe. Where can you get one? I can't find it available anywhere, and it was supposed to be available a month ago.