Pix-Star PXT8W002 8-Inch FotoConnect Wireless Digital Photo Frame: FrameChannel-compatible!

Pix-Star wireless digital picture frames are now FrameChannel-compatible!

Say “Hello” to a new kind of digital picture frame:  The Pix-Star PXTWoo2 wireless digital FotoConnect picture!  It’s only $249.99 right now on Amazon, and the shipping is FREE!!

In the words of Pix-Star:

The Pix-Star Webframe is a home device ahead of its time. It is the only digital photo frame to receive and send emails without a monthly fee. It displays beautiful 600 x 800 resolution photos on an 8-inch screen, but in addition to this, it serves as a Wi-Fi solution to help manage your home’s energy consumption.

No more sitting at the computer and waiting for large emails to load the pictures your friend emailed you, see them instantly with the Pix-Star Webframe.

No more connecting your frame to your computer every time you want to update the pictures on it.

Configuring the Wi-Fi connection with a Pix-Star Webframe is quick and simple and can be done using a few buttons on the compact remote control. Switch on the frame and make sure the network you want to connect to is reachable from your location. You will need to know the configuration of the Wi-Fi including the name of the network (SSID), the type of encryption (None, WEP, WPA) and the key if there is encryption.

Register your frame in a few minutes by visiting www.pix-star.com then enter the product ID, choose a password, a personalized email address and you are ready to send, receive, share and enjoy pictures on your Webframe.

Each Pix-Star Webframe has its own personal email address that you choose when you register the product. Anyone who has this email address can send pictures directly to your frame as an email attachment. Worried about spam or unwanted pictures coming to your inbox? Pix-Star is the only Wi-Fi frame with a built in spam blocker so you are protected from unsolicited pictures.

Photo emails can be a maximum of 18MB total. There is no limit to the number of pictures that can be attached in one email but try to limit it to 30 pictures. The slideshow transitions, time display per slide, and brightness can be customized in the frame’s menu.

By default, Pix-Star displays the pictures on its 2GB internal memory but it can also display online albums from Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Windows Live, Smugmug, Photobucket, Shutterfly, MobileMe, and more. All you will need to change is the “source” of the pictures, which can be done in the frame’s menu.

A sound (optional) informs you when a new Photo is received and an indication is displayed on the screen

All this with NO COMPUTER OR ANY OTHER DEVICE NEEDED!

As soon as your pictures are received on your Webframe (via email, SD card, USB, Bluetooth, etc.) they will automatically be resized into an 800 x 600 format to fit perfectly in the screen, with an unchanged high quality display. The LCD screen will reflect your best shots in its 4:3 aspect ratio and photos will be rotated to their proper orientation.

At the touch of a button on its well-designed remote control, the Webframe displays weather forecasts of the cities of your choice. Your preferred cities or countries can be selected from your dedicated account on www.pix-star.com. From this online account you can also program your favorite Web Radio Stations or audio streams to play directly from your Webframe, in addition to several personalized account settings all available on www.pix-star.com.

You can instantly share your photos for free with your friends and family, who appear in your contact lists. Customize your contact lists directly on your frame or from your account at www.pix-star.com. Send pictures to the people of your choice to their own Webframe, or to any other email address you want, so they can see what you see. Bluetooth compatibility allows you to upload a photo from a cell phone, no emailing required. Even though this frame has a 2GB internal memory and holds up to 10,000 pictures you still have the option of inserting a SD or USB flash memory card in the back to present a slideshow of those photos.

With a power consumption of only 5W, your Webframe is environmentally friendly. Moreover, thanks to its Eco-mode feature, you don’t have to unplug your Webframe before going to sleep and worry about wasting energy. From your account on www.pix-star.com you can easily schedule the times when your Webframe will automatically turn on and off. Email will still be received even when your Webframe is off for the night.

Spending Christmas apart this year? Your brother and sister in Vermont can send you pictures of their kids opening gifts directly to your Webframe in real time; you will see the photo within 20 seconds MAX! Then you can forward that picture to your mom and dad across town directly from your Webframe to theirs!

Connecting with distant friends and family through the magic of pictures has never been easier or faster.
Our Home Spaces (OHS) has been providing energy management solutions to homeowners since 2007. We specialize in providing remote management of Internet and WiFi based home devices via iPhone and computer control software. Our hardware display partner, Pix-star, has been providing sophisticated digital picture frames since December 2007. Pix-star and OHS have been working together to adapt this web-enabled frame for the energy awareness and emerging Smart Grid markets.

Together OHS and Pix-Star accumulate energy use information from WiFi enabled home appliances including thermostats, Point of Use Energy Monitors, and Appliance On/Off controllers. Information from these appliances is downloaded and displayed on your home’s Webframe – allowing you to keep an eye on your home’s energy settings while you are at the office or wherever you have your Pix-Star Webframe. Our Home Spaces is also working with progressive Energy devices like the Radio Thermostat WiFi Enabled Communicating Thermostat and utility companies to allow homeowners access to their home’s information.

Product Description
Say Hello to a New Kind of Digital Frame. The Pix-Star Webframe is a home device ahead of its time. It is the only digital photo frame to receive and send email without a monthly fee, it displays beautiful 600 x 800 resolution photos on an 8” screen, but in addition to this, it serves as a WiFi solution to manage your home’s energy consumption.

Even more market-worthy: here is a customer review of the Pix-Star webframe:

I bought this frame thinking that I would like to have a frame to show my wife and kids some pictures of where I am when I travel for work, but it turned out to be the miracle frame for my parents to connect with our lives.

I sent them a picture when we were sailing on San Francisco Bay, emailed it from my phone, and then called them from my phone.

They said, “Those are fantastic pictures of you on the bay, when did you go sailing?”

I said, “You guys still don’t get it. We are sailing right now! When you get pictures, it only takes 20-40 seconds from when I send it.”

I also emailed them pictures direct from the ski slopes in Tahoe.

My parents have never felt so connected with our family (they live in NY). When I send them a new picture, there is a little chime implying “here I am!”. They keep it in the kitchen so that they see them all the time.

Set up is incredibly easy, and many of the features are controllable from the web, so that I can manage the frame for my parents remotely. –Review by Tristan de Frondeville

Another satisfied customer says:

I bought this product a few months ago and it has just everything you want from a connected photoframe! Connection to web albums (Picasa, Facebook, Smugmug, and 10 others…), listening to web radios, and the reception of pictures by email directly on the frame without a PC thanks to its dedicated email address.
All the family likes it very much !

You can get your Pix-Star PXT8Woo2 wireless digital picture frame from the Amazon website!

Digital photo frames to get connected

John Walko at Video Imaging Design Line gives us some very interesting statistics about silicon providers for digital picture frames:

Courtesy of EE Times Europe

LONDON — The total silicon opportunity for digital photo frame suppliers will exceed $550 million by 2013, according to market research group InStat.

Microcontrollers are said to represent the largest opportunity in non-wireless enabled devices.

In a major study of the sector, InStat also found that the bill of materials for a wireless 8-inch digital photo frame will fall below $36 by 2013, with the LCD, the wireless module and the enclosure being the dominant cost items.

The researchers predict worldwide unit shipments for all types of digital photo frames will reach 50 million by 2013.

However because of the trend to purchase digital photo frames as gifts pre-loaded with pictures, most units shipped still lack advanced features such as wireless connectivity to the Internet. Nevertheless, wireless-enabled photo frames are a key growth driver as they will grow at twice the rate of overall digital photo frames in 2010.

“Prices for connected frames will continue to decline, and as manufacturers educate consumers about these devices; the mass market will become more comfortable using the Internet services connected frames support,” says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst.

Ethier adds applications such as sharing and downloading pictures over the Internet, as well as streaming Internet radio and video from online sites like YouTube, will be the main drivers in the sector.

Some of the major digital photo frame vendors and their silicon providers are said to include HP, Kodak, Pandigital, Philips, Samsung, Sony, RMI Corporation, Marvell Technology Group, and Samsung Electronics.

** Separately, Conexant said Tuesday (June 30) it has started sampling a range of SoCs targeting the connected photo frame and interactive display appliances market.

The parts integrate integrate Internet connectivity and touch-screen technology. The CX92735 supports streaming media content, MP3 audio playback with slideshow functionality, and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet connectivity.

The device integrates an ARM9 processor with a vector floating point unit and a dedicated image processor, which simultaneously processes streamed content.

iGala Wi-Fi Linux Based Photo Frame

ThinkGeek put the word out about the new iGala Wi-Fi Linux-based photo frame!

Unlike other digital photo frames that just accept memory cards and show photos, the iGala has a brain inside its rectangular head. Use the touchscreen interface to configure the iGala to connect to your wi-fi network, then the iGala can do all kinds of smart things like login to a Gmail account and display any e-mailed photos on its hi-res 800×600 screen.

Of course the iGala can pull your photos automatically from Flickr and you can connect to Windows Live FrameIt or FrameChannel if you’re looking for a free web based interface to automatically push photos, news and traffic to your frame. No PC is required because the iGala is essentially a mini touchscreen computer running Linux.

FrameChannel or FrameIt?

The iGala frame comes in two models, one for FrameChannel service (http://www.framechannel.com) and one for Windows Live FrameIt service (http://frameit.live.com). They are both customizable web service platforms to manage the intelligent delivery of personalized content to wireless digital picture frames.

You are not required to use either of these two services. The iGala is perfectly capable of receiving photos sent via e-mail and handling Flickr RSS feeds of photos all by itself.

FrameChannel offers a library of hundreds of channels of content, all optimized for viewing on wireless picture frames. These include text based channels that are converted to images such as news headlines, live weather forecasts, sports scores, and horoscopes as well as image content from sources like National Geographic, AP Images and other galleries shot by the top photographers from around the world. This content is then married with each user’s personal photos that can be uploaded to FrameChannel or pulled from a variety of supported photo sharing sites including Flickr, Picasa, Webshots, Facebook and others. Each user selects the channels that interest them, sets the rules for each channel and FrameChannel applies its rules engine to create a unique content stream for each user that is updated continually. The iGala frame also features a simple One-Click setup for FrameChannel service.

Microsoft’s Windows Live FrameIt service lets users customize a content feed that is delivered via RSS which is similar to FrameChannel. Users can customize weather data, news sources and their own photos via Live Spaces or SmugMug. Once users customized the channel on FrameIt website, they can input its Collection Name on iGala to display its content.

The main difference between the two services is the scope of their image content collections. iGala users will be able to switch between FrameIt and FrameChannel services by performing an easy firmware refresh on the iGala frame.

Product Features

• Wi-Fi enabled photo frame can pull photos from Gmail and Flicker and has touch screen interface for network configuration
• 8″ 4:3 800X600 Digital LCD
• No PC Needed for Setup, No Subscription Fees for Online Use
• Full Screen Touchscreen Interface
• No PC Needed for Setup
• Linux based operating system
• Wifi 802.11b/g with WEP, WPA and WPA2
• 1GB Internal Memory Stores over 5,000 images
• Auto Synchronization with Flickr Photo Sets
• Access to Flickr Private Photos
• Email Photos to Frame
• Windows Live FrameIt or FrameChannel Support for Photos, News and Weather
• Insert SD media card to display photos from the card
• USB Mass Storage Connectivity
• MP3 Support to Play Music
• Auto Power Saving
• 110V/250V AC Adapter
• Clock and Alarm Function

One in Ten Homes Has A Digital Picture Frame Now

Tech writer Mark Harris, on TechRadar.com, has an interesting article about how one in ten homes now has a digital picture frame in it!

Brits are snapping up digital photo frames faster than ever, according to high tech analysts Futuresource Consulting.

More than 1.8 million units were sold in the UK during 2008, at an average retail price of around £90, and frames are now present in an estimated ten per cent of UK homes.

“Fuelled by a glut of low-cost 7-inch widescreen offerings from a number of brands and retailers sales grew 60 per cent in 2008 from 2007,” says Simon Bryant, Principal Consultant, Futuresource Consulting.

“The market continues to be heavily reliant on gifting and first-time impulse buyers who are lured by broad distribution and very low prices. Between Christmas 2007 and 2008, like-for-like prices fell roughly 20 per cent for the most popular 7-inch widescreen frames.”

While top tier brands like Sony, Samsung, Kodak, Philips, and Toshiba increased their combined share of sales between 2007 and 2008 (from 42 to 54 per cent), no-name and own-brand frames continue to sell well.

Futuresource expects convergence products that incorporate photo frame functionality, such as connected TVs, netbooks and the iPod Touch, to gradually erode sales of dedicated frame. (Item:  I do not agree!  These things have different purposes!)

Bryant say, “Even by the end of this year – when we’re going to see the market grow to around 2m to 2.2m units – we’ll see crossover products that will beg the question ‘is it a photo frame or an alarm clock radio, a personal multimedia player or a portable TV?’”

Kodak has just licensed its OLED technology to LG for use in photo frames, and Wi-Fi, video-capable and even internet radio streaming frames expected to take market share throughout 2009.