Giinii 8 Digital Picture Frame

[Chieko Boteler]

Themultiformat memory-card reader is tucked under a ledge along with the power input and a mini-USB port for connecting directly to a computer. It accepts all major card types. There is also a USB port in a well on the side for viewing images off an external drive. The frame has 128MB of built-in storage, too.

For the best picture quality you'll want to skip copying photos from a memory card directly to the frame's memory. In order to fit a lot of images into that limited amount of space, the software that's used to compress images destroys a lot of detail and turned several of my test images into a posterized, blocky mess. I recommend connecting the GiiNii to a computer and transferring images manually. It won't fit as many, but at least they'll look good.

The quality of the panel itself is OK. Colors are accurate, but it has a limited dynamic range causing a loss in shadow and highlight detail. It's also not very bright, so putting it in a sunny room could be a problem. One nice extra is the inclusion of an autorotation feature. You can turn the display from landscape to portrait and photos will automatically rotate.

There are three menu systems in the GiiNii. Hitting the Exit button while the frame displays photos drops you into a content selection screen with options to view photos (JPEG, TIF, or still GIF), listen to music (MP3 and WMA files are supported), watch AVI or MOV videos, or access a Favorite folder you can fill with selected photos.

There's also an option to set and display the frame's clock, alarm, and calendar. The clock and date are semitransparent overlays, but turning on the alarm sticks an obtrusive yellow alarm bell graphic in the top left corner. Lastly, this screen is where you enter the Setup menu for control over language, storage, contrast, brightness, system info and reset, and the frame's Smart Sleep function. In general, this is a nice feature, as it lets you set specific times you want to turn the frame on and off or you can take advantage of the built-in light sensor that puts the frame to sleep when the room goes dark. However, activating this puts yet another unsightly graphic in the left corner--in this case a series of three Zs in increasing size.

But back to the menus. While pictures display, pressing the Menu button brings up all the viewing/slide show options. This includes things such as transition effects (16 choices including random and off), picture-to-screen ratio (actual size or full frame), slide show speed, musical accompaniment options, and collage. The transitions work well enough, but adding music to a slide show puts an ugly, useless track-length indicator on the screen. If it displayed artist, album, or song title information it would at least be helpful, but it's just a countdown timer. The collage option is also pretty worthless as you get four random themed background templates (Mother's Day, Baseball, Golf, and Fishing) with cutouts in them for pictures. There's no option to display a collage without the template.

In the end, despite having a seemingly large feature set, only a few of those features are well implemented; for example, slide show transitions were good. Music sounded decent considering the single, tiny speaker, and video playback was OK, but the last thing I want to see when trying to enjoy my photos and music is a cheesy graphic and useless information. And digging through all the menus--with the remote or the controls on the frame--is just a pain.

Buyers only get a 90-day warranty from GiiNii with sales receipt from an authorized retailer, which is acceptable when a frame costs well under $100, but this one doesn't. The company gets points for its customer support as there are how-to videos, an 800 number and e-mail listed should you need help or a repair, and you can participate in a live chat Webinar with GiiNii technical teams once a week.

The GiiNii 8-inch Ultra-thin Digital Picture Frame's saving grace is letting you quickly view pictures directly from a memory card. The frame itself is agreeable looking, even with it being mostly plastic, and the ability to easily clip on a wood frame is a nice add. But GiiNii really needs to work on polishing its features. Its price isn't quite low enough to excuse its faults.

The GiiNii 7" Tech Digital Picture Frame offers you the freedom and convenience to store, organize, and display your favorite photo moments. It supports the popular JPEG format and lets you view a wide range of pictures. The GiiNii photo frame helps you manage and label your photo albums right on the frame itself. A 7" LCD display with a resolution of 480 x 234, allows you to view the pictures with maximum clarity. This personalized digital photo frame has enhanced plug-and-play simplicity. The card reader is SD, MMC compatible. The GiiNii 7" Tech Digital Picture Frame includes a clock and calendar, along with a digital scrapbook. It is also ENERGY STAR certified.

We all have at least one technologically challenged relative. We can e-mail photos or post them on a personal Web page for some of our loved ones, but there are others who want nothing to do with a computer, let alone the Internet.

The perfect gadget for sharing photos with the computerless is the digital picture frame. This is a device about the size and shape of an ordinary picture frame. It contains an LCD screen, which displays multiple photos in a slideshow format, and it connects to the Internet via phone line to download new pictures and information to display on the screen.

This picture frame is designed to enable people with no computer, no digital camera and no computer skills to benefit from some aspects of the digital boom. The idea is that a person who does have a computer, a digital camera and computer skills buys the frame, sets up the account and passes it on.

Once the account is set up, you (the person with the computer) upload photos to the Ceiva Web site. Each night, the digital picture frame (in the computerless person's house) uses the phone line to connect to the Ceiva servers and download any new pictures.

The next morning, the new pictures automatically show up in the slideshow rotation. You can also control all of the frame's settings via the Web site. Here are some of the settings that can be adjusted:

The frame is actually a very simple computer. It has most of the same components as the computer on your desktop, but they're a lot simpler in the frame because they only have to perform a single task.

The central processing unit (CPU) in the Ceiva digital picture frame is similar to the kind used in small, electronic handheld games. The most processor-intensive task performed by this CPU is downloading pictures from the Web site. The rest of the time, it doesn't break a sweat.

The frame has some ROM memory to store the operating system. It also has some Flash memory, which is where the pictures, settings and some of the operating software live. Both types of memory are persistent -- no data is lost if the unit is unplugged.

The display is a 640x480-pixel, passive-matrix liquid crystal display (LCD) with a viewing area of about 5 by 7 inches (13 by 18 cm). This type of display is thin enough that the digital frame isn't much thicker than an ordinary picture frame. The pictures are displayed in 12-bit color, which means that approximately 4,100 different colors can be presented on the screen.

The only user-operated controls on the frame are a black button, which adjusts the brightness of the display, and a white button that turns the frame on when the user first plugs it in and can also be used to manually dial in.

Once the frame has been plugged into a phone line and a power outlet, it starts to display the pictures that were originally stored on the frame. If the user presses and holds the white button on the back of the frame, it dials up and connects to the Internet.

The $50-per-year fee for the Ceiva service includes access to the Internet by way of a local phone number. The connection to the Internet is used only to download the new photos and settings to the frame. There is no interactivity, no Web access and no e-mail. The device is designed to behave like a picture frame, not a computer.

Once the frame is connected to the Internet, it logs on to Ceiva's servers using a unique serial number. Once logged on, the frame compares the pictures already on the frame to the ones waiting to be sent, downloading any new ones. It also downloads any new settings.

When it is finished downloading, the frame hangs up the phone line and starts displaying the new photos one after another. It turns itself off at the set time in the evening, and back on at the set time in the morning.

You use the Ceiva Web site to control just about every aspect of the device. After you buy the frame, you go to the Web site to register it and pay for the service. This creates an account on the site that is exclusive to your frame. You can then upload your pictures and determine the settings.

Now you can give the frame to a friend or family member who doesn't have a computer. All that person has to do is plug the frame into a phone line and a power outlet and hit the white button on the back -- simple tasks for even most technologically resistant among us. The first time the frame connects, it dials a toll-free number and downloads the settings you created from the Web site. One of the settings is the local dial-up number to be used by the frame. Now that the frame has these settings installed, it connects to the Internet again, this time using the local dial-up number, to download the pictures you posted to the Ceiva site.

The next-generation Ceiva frame will add some neat features such as the ability to print pictures. You'll be able to print them either on a special local printer or remotely through a service that prints the pictures and sends them to you in the mail.

It will also have the ability to play recorded sounds with each picture, a CompactFlash memory slot to display pictures directly from a digital camera, and a small remote to control features such as printing and some of the settings that can only be adjusted via the Web in the current Ceiva frame.

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