Sam Costello, Editor-in-Chief of WirelessPictureFrame has interviewed the movers and shakers of the digital frame market over the last year. All speak of the growing market and emergence of the (wireless) digital frame as an information appliance.
Great reading for those following the industry! Watch for more from Sam over the coming months.
Steve Woo, Vice President of Sales, Viewsonic
Eric Kanagy, CEO of RedPost
Alan Phillips, Co-Founder of FrameMedia
Andrew Caffey, Executive Vice President, PF Digital
JT VonLunen, President of AllDigitalFrames.com
Joe DiMare, CEO of Bigeframe
Dean Finnegan, Pandigital
Bryan Zmijewski, Lucky Oliver
Tom Berarducci, Consumer Imaging Systems Group at Kodak
Harry Wang, Parks Associates
The eStarling frame from PF Digital was one of the first digital picture frames to have wireless capabilities, making it an object of the techno-lust. That lust turned sour, though, when customers found that the first batch of eStarling frames had problems with stability and WiFi signal strength. Frustrated users vented on the Web and eStarling took a public relations drubbing.
The eStarling is back with version 2.0, which PF Digital says adds Mac compatibility and fixes the WiFi and cosmetic issues that frustrated customers.
To make amends, the company is replacing all eStarling 1.0 frames with the new eStarling 2.0. The frame is also for sale to new customers at US$249.99.
To find out more about the replacement program, what PF Digital learned from the problems with the first frame, and what new features are coming to eStarling frames later this year, we spoke on May 4 to Andrew Caffey, executive vice president of PF Digital.
WPF: What was the cause of the problems with the frame that shipped during the 2006 holidays?
AC: We had one or two poor decisions that were made by our manufacturers in China on the hardware that was selected for our frame design, in particular the chips that were selected. I’m afraid in our dash to get the product to market in time for the Christmas season, these frames were not individually tested and the problems that resulted from the chip selection weren’t evident to us until the frames got into the market.
Many frames were sold at the Christmas season through the ThinkGeek.com site. What we’ve done for all of those purchasers — we felt very bad about those problems of course — and have moved to replace each and every one of those early eStarling frames with a new eStarling 2.0. I understand those customers will be receiving those new eStarling 2.0 frames starting (Friday, May 4).
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Owners of the troubled eStarling 1.0 wireless digital picture frame started receiving free upgrades to the 2.0 frame on Friday, May 4, according to Andrew Caffey, executive vice president of PF Digital, the company that makes the eStarling frame. Caffey revealed this an interview with WirelessPictureFrame.com on Friday. The full interview will run on the site later this week.
The eStarling 1.0 frame was plagued by a number of problems, including issues with crashing and shorter-than-advertised WiFi range.
In response to those issues, and voluminous customer complaints, PF Digital announced that it would replacing all eStarling 1.0 frames free of charge with the new 2.0 version. ThinkGeek.com, the site that sold the frames originally, is handling the replacements.
More on this issue and other eStarling news will come in the full interview with Caffey.
