Others say...

"dmims"
Being a novice with digital frames, I found the directions with this product very confusing and the product was not very "user" friendly for me.

"Evaluation Aluratek 7 inch digital photo frame"
The photo frame display has a good resolution and with proper settings can show an exellent display with bright colors. Very easy to load pictures on the fixed drive of the frame via the computer. Fixed memory of 256 MB is so large that you can store a lot of pictures on it. Product also reads very easily pictures stored on a SD card or on a flash drive. Loading MP3 music on it is very straight forward and system operates good with pictures and background music. Remote control availability is very handy.
Some negative points:
1. The manual is not alwyas clear and doesn't describe all functions. You should find out a couple of things by yourself.
2. The system doesn't show pictures which are loaded in vertical/upright position. If you want to see these kind of pictures you have to load them in the horizontal position and while displaying them on the frame you have an option than to rotate the picture.
3. Still could not find out how to display your own picture on the calendar function. Nothing is written about the calendar function in the manual.
4. The system doesn't loose its calendar settings when it is turned off but looses them after the electrical cord is unplugged. Other function settings though are kept if power is lost.
5. Noticed that the system doesn't use the full 7 inch display to show the pictures loaded. Has probably something to do with the picture quality loaded but had not spent time on this to find out more. There is a function though where you can enlarge the picture to the full size of the display but then you can only view that particular picture. It is thus not possible to view all pictures automatically in an enlarged form while operating in slide show mode.
6. There are three options to look at pictures in a slide show mode, fast, medium and slow. The slowest option is in my opinion still a bit too fast and I would rather have slide show speed options in seconds or minutes.



"Disappointed - I returned it"
I had a few features that were "must haves" that I was looking for, and this frame supposedly had them. But once I got it, I found that the features weren't everything they said they were. First the positives:
-can use a variety of storage media
-nice visual clarity
-easy basic set up

Now the negatives:
-the remote is needed to do a lot of the set-up. You lose the remote, you lose most of the functionality.
-the timer function does not work with slideshow. The timer will turn off a slideshow, but it will not turn the frame on in slideshow mode. It turns the frame back on in set-up mode. You then need to use the remote to start the slideshow. Tech support says this is the way it is designed.
-setting up the timer is not intuitive (to say the least).

"Aluratek 15-inch Hi-Res Digital Picture Frame"
Although I am pleased with the quality of the product, I do not appreciate products that do not clarify limitations in their manual or in their advertising.

1) this product has a undocumented limitation of 1000 digitalpictures. If there are more than 1000 pictures in a folder on the memory card inserted in the frame, the product does not work and there is nothing that identifies the problem. I had to file a ticket with the manufacturer and it took two responses before they admitted their defect. This limitation is about 1/2 of the internal memory and about 1/8 my 2 GB memory card and is a waste.

2) if you put more than one folder on the memory disk, it will only read one folder for pictures even if both folders have less than 1000 photos. If you put a second folder with movies or music, that is not a problem-only pictures. This was also confirmed by the manufacturers help desk. The underutilized capacity is unbelievable.

3) the frame does not actualy do a random slide show. it also does not actually pick a specific folder in a second frame to show. Given a 1000 picture limitation and a 10 second viewing per picture, there is about a 2-3 hour recyle. without a random slideshow, the repetiion becomes boring.

all these product limitations, did not exist in my previous, smaller digital picture frame. Despite the very good picture quality, if the advertising or product manual hightighted these product limitations, I probably would not have ordered this product or would have returned it on receipt.


"Good Resolution, Basic Features, Some Limitations"
This frame has a very good screen resolution (800x480) for its price range. Also has very simple controls and operations. If you are looking for a feature-rich frame with sophisticated on screen menu, this frame is not for you, but if you are looking for high resolution frame with basic features at a reasonable price, this frame fits the bill.

While the majority of digital cameras shoot with the aspect ratio of 4:3, this frame as well as almost all other frames are wide-screen, with the aspect ratio of 5:3. I don't understand why there should be some conflicting standards for two items that go hand in hand, it reminds me of the packaging buns and hot dogs. In any case, this frame shows the pictures in landscape only. If you want your landscape pictures to be shown in full with no white space around them, you have to manually crop them to give them a 5:3 aspect ratio before you put them on the memory card. Otherwise, you have to use the frame's Mode button to use either of its three display modes (Full, Auto-fit, Pan-scan). The Full mode will stretch the picture to fit the width of the screen, thus to some degree distorts the image. Auto-fit shows the whole picture, therefore showing a 4:3 picture on a 5:3 screen will leave white space (actually black space) on both sides. Pan-scan, which is the default mode, matches the width of the image with the width of the frame, thus to show a 4:3 picture, the fame crops from the top and bottom of the image to bring it to 5:3 aspect ratio, so the crop is done automatically, but not at your discretion.

It has auto slide-show with nice random transitions to show pictures at three preset speeds. The default is fast (6 seconds on each picture). By pressing the Time button on the back of the frame, you can switch to medium (15 seconds), or slow (30 seconds). For the slide-show, if you want the pictures to be shown in a specific order, there is no control for that. To achieve that, you have to copy the pictures to the memory card one by one in the order you want them to be shown, because the frame shows the pictures based on the copy date/time stamp.

The frame can only show pictures in JPEG format, but for many that shouldn't be a problem, as this is the most popular format. However, you need to know something that I learned the hard way. I had many JPEG pictures that this frame could not show. These are normal JPEG images that can be shown by all browsers and graphic program in the computer, yet the frame could not show them. I played with their resolution and other properties, to no avail. Finally, it turns out that if an image has been saved by a photo editing software (I use PhotoImpact), although it is saved in JPEG, the frame cannot show it. The frame can only show the images that come directly from a digital camera, or saved by Microsoft Paint program. So when I called the images the frame could not show into Windows Paint program and saved them with Paint, they could be shown in the frame. I contacted Aluratek's technical support, but they responded that they do not have any solution for this problem yet.

Another thing that I learned by experience is the that Off button (holding the Play/Pause button for 3 seconds) turns off the screen, but does not reset the circuits. In few cases the frame showed a distorted image. I turned the frame off using this button, to no avail. When I unplugged the frame and plugged it back in, everything turned out OK.

Another behavior about this frame which I do not like is that when you turn it off (unplug it) it looses all its setups and when you turn it back on, everything goes back to the default. For example, if you change the transition speed to medium (15 seconds) or slow (30 seconds), when you turn it off and on, it is back to fast (6 seconds).

Overall, in my view if you can live with a few small flaws, it is a good frame with very good resolution at a reasonable price.