live picture frame thingys

there is a whole display of these at staples..

- all 200$ or more
- a couple of tacky small ones for around 100$
- all designs/frames look really bad

Why doesnt ms bring out one - sold at cost (yes cost) that is good looking, large and cool.

after a year - raise the price.

its a cool idea - that partners are messing up (gross frames, logos on front!, plastic-ey, small, huge borders...

just thinking - like xbox - subsidize them till people know what they are..

I think they are cool - but youd have to be crazy to buy any of the current "designs"

?

edit- *also - certain flat screen monitors that are 8 x 10 or larger are avail for under 200$..  the HD is a memory stick - so no cost there..

I don't care about aesthetic, I care about colour reproduction. Ensure all frames you buy use 8-bit panels (16.7m) rather than 6-bit (16.2m) and have good backlights.

It'll be a while before colour eInk comes technologically viable, but when they do they'll make perfect digital picture frames.

..the memory stick thing is weird too... too bad it wasnt just wireless / pick up broadcast signal from network..

so on your main pc you could load an app that is basically a shared wireless stream...

drag photos in - it gets broadcast to the picure frame - not manually try to figure out how your camera works backwords (mem stick)

...edit - or videos... or news feeds ... or website (channel9)

id hang that up

jamie wrote:

..the memory stick thing is weird too... too bad it wasnt just wireless / pick up broadcast signal from network..

so on your main pc you could load an app that is basically a shared wireless stream...

drag photos in - it gets broadcast to the picure frame - not manually try to figure out how your camera works backwords (mem stick)

...edit - or videos... or news feeds ... or website (channel9)

id hang that up

I wouldn't use a picture frame which required me to run a daemon on any computer. What if I wanted to run Linux?

No, photoframes which use wired ethernet and SMB shares (or some other protocol)and get their power off ethernet are best.

jamie wrote:

after a year - raise the price.

That's going to go down well.

I agree with all your other points, though. I love the general idea of these things, it's just that I'd never buy one right now for all the reasons you mentioned.

I'd definitely want one that's wireless, as you mentioned. It'd have to grab the pictures off my WHS, or whatever PC I've shared pictures on.

I'm not to keen on the memory consumption of these things though. If we could get an e-Ink one, like W3bbo said, that would only require power when changing the picture, that'd be ideal.

actually i would recommend making sure they dont work with mac or linux. then ms could justify an at cost deal..

then make them umpc's that hang up - with touch screen..

ill take one for kitchen..recipes... a huge one for living room ... and a few small ones for here and there 

..partners WRECK much of what ms does innovate...

jamie wrote:

then make them umpc's that hang up - with touch screen..

ill take one for kitchen..recipes... a huge one for living room ... and a few small ones for here and there 

I've been looking for something like this for ages. A thin UMPC that is easily wall-mountable. I'd use it to control my lights through home automation, check my messages when I come home, et cetera. Being able to take them off their wall mount and taking them around the house would be great, too.

jamie wrote:

sold at cost

I, as a MSFT stock holder, will forbid this.
Either sell for an exorbiant amount ($500 Vista Ultimate), or take huge loss ($1B loss over Xbox lifetime), but none of this "at cost" stuff

W3bbo wrote:

rather than 6-bit (16.2m)

Huh? I can see how you could mistyped "8-bit" for 24-bit colors -- which can do 16.7 millions color, but I'm not sure what you mean w/ 6 bit thing.

W3bbo wrote:

I don't care about aesthetic

The empty space is very important to a photograph. Although I haven't seen a frame design that violate this rule, but, yeah, at $200 a pop, that's tough to justify.

jamie wrote:

..partners WRECK much of what ms does innovate...

MS's been overusing the word "innovate" lately, w/ the DOJ thing and all... so, I'm not sure if picture frames is so much an MS innovation... I think more of a natural, obvious evolution

W3bbo wrote:


No, photoframes which use wired ethernet and SMB shares (or some other protocol)and get their power off ethernet are best.

I disagree with that, the frames should be wireless and draw power from a normal wallwart power adapter.   While my house is flood wired with cat-6, my parent's place isn't and they are the more likely demographic for one of these.

It would be nice to be able to wirelessly send pictures to it or have it access a UPnP mediaServer (with cache local option).  Being able to Bluetooth an image to it would be really handy! 

Minh wrote:



jamie wrote: ..partners WRECK much of what ms does innovate...

MS's been overusing the word "innovate" lately, w/ the DOJ thing and all... so, I'm not sure if picture frames is so much an MS innovation... I think more of a natural, obvious evolution

Apple Announces the iTablet, iDesk and iFrame Touch

........ or MS could..seeing as they did it first

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=62052#62052

Minh wrote:

Huh? I can see how you could mistyped "8-bit" for 24-bit colors -- which can do 16.7 millions color, but I'm not sure what you mean w/ 6 bit thing.

Nope.

Thesedays, consumer LCD panels fall into 2 categories of image quality:

Dithering (either temporally or spatially), with 6-bits per colour. Resulting in 16.2 million colours when using differing (and 500,000 colours being impossible to reproduce).

True-colour, with 8-bits per colour. Resulting in the full RGB gamut of 16.7 million colours.

Google!

Minh wrote:



W3bbo wrote: rather than 6-bit (16.2m)

Huh? I can see how you could mistyped "8-bit" for 24-bit colors -- which can do 16.7 millions color, but I'm not sure what you mean w/ 6 bit thing.

Typical TN LCD panels have 6-bits per color channel (6 bits per subpixel, or 18 bit color) rather than 8-bits per color channel.  They either use dithering or color cycling to simulate colors that the panel cannot reproduce.

(Gah, got interrupted while I was writing this and W3bbo beat me to it).

CannotResolveSymbol wrote:

Typical TN LCD panels have 6-bits per color channel (6 bits per subpixel, or 18 bit color) rather than 8-bits per color channel.  They either use dithering or color cycling to simulate colors that the panel cannot reproduce.

And as a result end up looking crap

The image quality of low-end CRTs from 2002 is still better than on today's low-end LCDs that are even twice the price.

//is planning on buying a CRT HDTV

jeffsand wrote:

What do you think of The Chumby?

That looks kinda cool

Maybe it's just me, but I just don't see the appeal.