Ceiva 8-Inch Digital Picture Frame Review
Price: $199.99
Warranty: http://www.ceiva.com/ccare/hlp/hp/help.jsp?hid=117
Product Specifications:
8-inch LCD, with 640 x 480 resolution
Built-in slots for CF, SD, MMC, and Memory Stick cards
WiFi and Broadband network connections
Two interchangeable faceplates
Content channels from ESPN, ABC, the Wall Street Journal, The Weather Channel, and more
Grade:
Summary: A Promising Offering
The Ceiva 8-inch Digital Picture Frame is an interesting, though occasionally frustrating, combination of smart features, a few bugs, and forward-looking innovation. While certain aspects of using the frame may frustrate users, once they get the frame working, they should be pleased. Of particular interest are the content channels provided by Ceiva that users can subscribe to – a path that other providers should follow.
Ease of Setup: Capitalization Counts
The Ceiva frame is set up through an onscreen interface that’s controlled by buttons on the front of the frame (despite an allusion to it in the documentation, the frame does not support USB keyboards).
Entering letters or numbers on the screen will bring to mind the slight frustration of text messaging – each onscreen button is mapped to six characters, upper and lower case of three letters. This can mean a lot of button clicks to get the character you want, but happily you won’t need to do it very often.
The setup process is fairly straightforward: tell the frame how to connect to Ceiva’s network (phone line, broadband connection, or wirelessly), set some configuration data, and you’re off and running.
In the process of configuring the frame, I discovered a small bug. My wireless network password includes letters that are capitalized. When I entered the capital letters, the connection consistently failed. However, when I entered the letters as lowercase, the connection worked.
Ceiva manages the transfer of images to the frame by staging them in the user’s account. These images are either uploaded through the web management interface (more on this later) or emailed to the frame. Then the frame connects to Ceiva’s system and downloads the photos.
Software: Great Features, A Little Cluttered
To add photos to the frame, you use a somewhat overloaded web management interface that allows users to upload photos, subscribe to content channels, email photos, and order prints, mugs, or t-shirts bearing photos from their account. The number of options available, along with the images used to represent each choice, makes the management tool a bit overwhelming, though it could be simplified without losing functionality.
Once you get past the interface, you’ll discover a lot of interesting features. The ability to order products is a good idea. Ceiva’s content channels are an even better one.
Ceiva offers channels that display content from ESPN, ABC News, the Wall Street Journal, the Weather Channel, and photos from photo libraries. This is a great idea, and shows one of the promises of the wireless photo frames. However, due to the size of the screen and the resolution of the content channel images, they become hard to read from five or six feet across the room.
Because of the presence of the content channels, the Ceiva frame does not support RSS feeds.
Access to the content channels, and updating photos over a network, require a subscription to Ceiva’s $9.99/month PicturePlan service (not required for displaying photos from the memory card). The price is reasonable, though it would be nice to see more content and a better user experience come along with it.
Updates of both photos and content can be scheduled or initiated by holding down a button on the back of the frame. The scheduled update feature is nice, but is limited to only hourly updates. More frequent options would be nice, since part of the fun of a networked device is instant (or at least speedier) updates.
Also able for scheduling are the times that the frame turns on and off, eliminating unwanted light at night and saving electricity.
Along with updating photos over a network, Ceiva touts the ability to email photos to the system via mobile phones or standard email. Despite some initial difficulties, Ceiva tech support was able to help me send photos from my own and from my desktop email client, sending photos was a snap.
Screen: Appealing, with Some Options
Large or high-quality images are downsized to fit on the 640 x 480 screen and look great. Smaller images are letterboxed with black bars around them, and look pretty good, too.
The case that houses the screen has a detachable plastic faceplate that allows users to choose between black or a faux wood-grain. Ceiva has offered more upscale choices for its earlier frames, so hopefully those options will migrate to this new version soon.
Value: Worth Your Money
The Ceiva’s $199 price tag won’t break your bank account and though there are some bugs in the product, the Ceiva is generally a good value.
Innovation: Channeling
Ceiva’s greatest innovation is the content channels. They’re a great idea and a compelling reason to consider buying a Ceiva frame. Here’s hoping they sign up more content partners soon.
Conclusion
The Ceiva 8-inch Digital Picture Frame is a promising product. It’s got some great features –content channels, detailed scheduling – and some problems – set up difficulties, cluttered management tool. Luckily those problems should be easily solvable, so Ceiva wireless photo frames should earn a place on many desks.
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