Kodak EasyShare 8" Digital Photo Frame - White

Revised: Good frame with some issues and my solutions

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Kodak EasyShare 8" Digital Photo Frame - White

This frame is one of the better ones that can show pics and video at the same time. The frame controls took a little getting used to but, found it better than the tiny remote on other frames. I did a firmware update (the frame's operating software)which i think improved the icons making it easier to understand for the non-techie types. One disappointment was there was no mini-usb cable included in the package, when most other companies include it in theirs; it's just the frame, power adapter, and software. A slight peeve with most digital frames; is the new frames are coming out in the widescreen format (16:9 ratio/ 800 by 480 resolution like this frame) and not fullscreen format (4:3 ratio/ 800 by 600 resolution) which most pics are in anyway. So, with this frame your getting an 8 inch screen but, it displays like a 7 inch screen pic and i apologize for my ranting and raving.

Sidenote : From the Kodak website, their coming out with OLED frames; kinda like LCD but, with more vibrant colours

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6 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

8 price(s) | 62 days ago at

A nice product from Kodak

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Kodak EasyShare 8" Digital Photo Frame - White

As usual, after searching for products and checking all possible reviews, finally decided to buy this Kodak M820 attributed to the balance of price and performance.

After opening the box, peel off screen protector, plug in and power it on. While enjoying its introduction show, I download >400 pictures from my picture folder (that I took now and then by Sony W7, Nikon L4, Panasonic LZ7, and Kodak very early digital camera) into a SD card (with some MP3 music files too). It seems that all pictures and motion file taken by those camera are all been play very well with good picture resolution and clear sound. The picture is very bright and the sound is loud enough to be heard in all corner of a 20 x 20 living room.

So far, this frame has done what it supposed to do: showing pictures with some blending of music as bonus. The 800 x 480 resolution is so far the best on the available market with hope-to-be-cheaper price. 8" screen size is visible within reasonable distance, however, buy larger

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6 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

8 price(s) | 102 days ago at

Awesome Digital Frame

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Kodak EasyShare 8" Digital Photo Frame - White

I got this digital frame as a mother's day gift. I was planning the weekend to collect and upload all the images from the siblings in the family. The digital frame made the task effortless and saved me a lot of time. The frame has a lot of features that will probably never be used (like printing directly from the frame) but are fun to have anyway. The picture quality is perfect and the frame compresses the file size of the images that you store to the internal memory so it holds a lot more pictures than I had expected. The user interface is really nice but it takes about five minutes of playing with it to get the hang of everything. The touch screen is nice because remotes (most other digital frames come with a remote) tend to get lost at my Mom's place. Overall, this was a great buy and the best digital frame I have seen on the market.

6 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

8 price(s) | 208 days ago at

Excellent Frame

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Kodak EasyShare 8" Digital Photo Frame - White

I have owned the Kodak EX-811, SV-811 and just purchased the M80 Digital Picture frame from Kodak for Mom for Mothers Day. The image quality is hard to beat. The frame looks good by itself or you can purchase a frame like I did. Copying the images to the frame was a snap with a USB flash drive. You still lose a bit of the image if you have the frame set to fill the entire screen, but this is not uncommon with 16:9 aspect ratio.
The touch pads in the frame and fairly straight forward as well. It is easier that in the previous models with the remote. I hope that Kodak updates their wireless version and this would be a virtually perfect!

6 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

8 price(s) | 208 days ago at

Maybe I can save someone some money

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Kodak EasyShare 8" Digital Photo Frame - White

I bought Kodak digital frame for my wife for Mother's Day. First of all I think these digital frames will be found as a free prize in cereal boxes in a year, but anyway...the only reason I would buy one is because I like to make slide shows with Photostory. This model promised to play video in the following formats: MOV, MPEG1, MPEG4, and AVI. Since Photostory can only publish in the WMV format, I had to convert. I converted into all those formats and nothing seemed to work. I fiddled and fiddled with Super Converter and finally found settings that did not get an error AND would play on the digital frame. However, the quality of the video play on the digital frame was so poor that even I would send this thing back...if I bought it for me. The problems are digital noise (sort of like pixelation) and color distortion while panning. My wife, on the other hand, only wants to see the pictures and doesn't care one way or the other if I spent hours to make a cool slide show. So I will

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keep this one for her and will not buy another one unless/until they play the WMV format without losing any quality.

The 16:9 aspect ratio of the screen is such that normal 4:3 digital pictures will either be automatically cropped or you will have black borders on the edges of your pictures. You have those two choices. One alternative they don't offer is to distort the pictures by stretching them. Thank goodness for small miracles.

You have no control over cropping, pan and zoom. These features are built in slide show but not so that you can change them. All you can do is turn them on or off. Cropping, panning, and zooming are the reasons I use Photostory first. Photostory slideshows look great on Windows Media Player but it is not worth the hassle of converting to get such poor results on the Kodak digital frame. If you wanted to crop out the jalopy in the background of your daughter's prom night picture, you'll have to do it before you put the picture on the SD card.

The white plastic frame is not much to look at. My wife might send it back for that reason. The paper cutouts aren't much better. Supposedly there is a wood-look frame that goes on it but I couldn't find one.

The touch sensitive frame takes some getting used to. It is a good thing they have words to go with some of the icons, but they need words for all of the icons.

The booklet is no help for anything. If you thought you knew how to turn an electrical device on and off, read it here because it is not covered in the book. For this device you have to hold the button down for a few seconds, then release, then sit back patiently because it takes exactly 5 more seconds before it blinks on. Just when you thought it wasn't working, it comes on. It would have been nice if they had mentioned that so new users would not have to read about it here. Once it blinks on, Kodak does a little advertising and then the display freezes for a l-o-n-g 30 seconds. Nothing works. Then it goes black for another 10 seconds and finally launches "automatically" into a slide show of your pictures. Turning it off requires the same several seconds to hold the button down, but the frame blinks off as soon as you release the button. If you push and release the on/off button like normal and it doesn't work, you might be inclined to find the Troubleshooting part of the manual. Here is what they suggest, "Make sure it is plugged in," (well, duh!), and "Make sure the power switch on the frame is on." Well, you can't tell if the switch is on because on and off look and feel identical. This would have been a perfect opportunity to mention that you have to hold the button down and then release. Sheesh!

The booklet does describe how you can use the frame to copy pictures from one device to another, print pictures, delete pictures, select multiple pictures (for what?), and copy pictures from your computer. I suggest that if you have a computer, then all these features are 10 times easier and faster to do right on your computer.

If you use the instructions in the book to see thumbnail sized pictures of your pictures, it shows you a total of six pictures from each of your picture sources. If you select the SD card as your picture source, then it shows you zero pictures. Figure that one out! If you go to the touch border and select Multi-up, then you get 28 thumbnails. I had never heard the term, multi-up, but now I have. If you want to see the rest of your thumbnails, you have to learn how to slide your finger along the bottom of the frame just right or it reverts to a different display. The only way I have figured out how to get out of that location is to turn the digital frame off and then on again.

You cannot turn the slideshow off. If you want to look at just one picture, you have to go through the tedium of finding it without making any mistakes, then selecting it without making any mistakes, and pushing one of the unmarked frame buttons on the right. Then that one picture becomes a slide show, complete with transitions and panning and zooming. Basically your picture blinks at you. If you want to stop the blinking, you have to go into the controls and change the slide display time to a longer setting. While you're there you can turn off the transitions.

You can select two modes of picture advancement through the slideshow. It will advance through the pictures alphabetically by the name of the picture or by the date of the image. If you have a special order you want your pictures to display, you will have to rename them so that they will sort alphabetically.

Other than that, the pictures seem to show up fine without distortion. Color rendition and contrast might leave some people looking for something better. Set up was as easy as plugging in the SD card and turning it on (heh, heh, turning it on...heh, heh...just that simple).

It's funny but the larger screen models of these things are approaching the cost of a new laptop computer. Hmmmm. Wouldn't it be ironic if the big screen digital frames became more expensive than the larger screen laptops?

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6 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

8 price(s) | 215 days ago at

The description above is misleading

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Kodak EasyShare 8" Digital Photo Frame - White

I do not own this frame, but I wanted to point out some misleading points in the description above. First, the M820 (or M1012) is not a wireless frame so it is not able to receive images wirelessly from the Kodak Easy Share gallery. The wireless line has the model designation of EX. Second the "HD format" that's referred to in the description is just the 16:9 aspect ratio. This makes it widescreen, but doesn't mean it has incredible resolution like a HD tv. The frame has a resolution of: 800 x 400 which is really nice for a digital frame currently, but not at the level of a HD tv.

All of that said, this looks like a really nice digital frame. The 800 x 400 resolution is at the upper end on the market. I also really like the Quick Touch Border Control feature. Some of the criticism of Kodak's earlier frames was that they were too dependant on the small remote, which was easily lost. This new feature will remedy that and appears to a have an easy user interface. This frame also

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6 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

8 price(s) | 226 days ago at

Kodak EasyShare 8" Digital Photo Frame - White

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