The Bottom Line: The Philips 9FF2CME/37 Digital Photo Frame provides pro photographers, serious-amateur shutterbugs, and snap-shooters with a surfeit of digital image viewing options
Howard_Creech's Full Review: Philips (9FF2CME/37) Digital Picture Frame
In the olden days photographers took pictures, had their film processed, looked through their 3x5 inch prints, and then shoved the vast majority of those pictures into a drawer and promptly forgot about them. Over the past decade, digital cameras have essentially replaced film cameras. Last year photographers worldwide took 72 billion digital photographs, and they’ll almost certainly take more this year. Those kinds of numbers naturally lead to the question – what do we do with all those pictures? You can’t just shove digital images into a drawer in the kitchen.
In 2000 several former Disney executives formed a new company called CEIVA Logic to market the first generation of Digital Photo Frames. Digital Photo Frames (DPFs) are an innovative high tech device that provides a simple and effective way to view digital images. DPFs sit on a desk or hang on a wall much like an ordinary picture frame, but the similarities end there. Digital Photo Frames contain a TFT LCD (liquid crystal display) screen which continuously displays photos, usually via slideshow format.
The earliest DPFs had poor resolution and flat colors, they were very expensive, they were overly complex (images had to be uploaded to the Ceiva website and then downloaded via dedicated phone line to the DPF and Ceiva charged a monthly fee for the service). Ceiva is still making DPFs, but they now have lots of competition and competition is a very good thing for consumers - DPF prices have dropped significantly and LCD technology has improved substantially – so DPF screens are bigger, colors are better, and resolution is sharper. Today’s DPFs are truly portable (powered by internal batteries), they are not tethered to a dedicated phone line anymore, and there is no longer any need to pay a monthly service fee.
As a veteran photographer (35 years) and a heavy user of digital cameras, a DPF is a valuable tool for reviewing the images I shoot over the course of my digital camera tests. I got a Philips 7" Digital Photo Frame (7FF1AW/37) late last year and I’ve been very pleased with it, so when presented with the opportunity to try out the new Philips 9FF2CME/37 9” Digital Photo Frame I jumped at the chance. I felt that a larger screen would make it easier for me to quickly and accurately assess image quality. So far that assumption has proven to be correct.
Ergonomics
The Philips 9FF2CME/37 looks like a standard picture frame, but it is noticeably heavier and thicker. Build quality seems to be very good. The satin silver metallic frame surrounds a large LCD screen. The Philips 9FF2CME Digital Photo Frame is also available in new-age look pearl white and traditional wood.
Plug the Philips 9FF2CME/37 Digital Photo Frame in so the internal battery can charge – a full charge requires about 3 hours (a fully charged battery is good for about 1 hour of playback time). The primary control is a round on/off button on the top right side (in vertical display mode) at the back of the unit. When the unit is on/charging the on/off button glows blue. Plug in a memory card and turn the DPF on (by holding the on/off button down) and after a brief pause (2-3 seconds) the Philips logo appears on the screen and you’ll have instant access to your photos - displayed "slideshow" style right on your desktop (or on the wall above your desk).
Set-Up
In addition to the on/off button there’s a tiny compass switch (four-way controller) and several multi-function buttons. The compass switch and multi-function buttons are used for setup and to select/change/modify operations and functions. The initial set up of the DPF is a bit intimidating because when the screen (front of the unit) is visible the unit’s controls (rear of the unit) are not. Once I got used to navigating the menu via controls I couldn’t see, operation quickly became almost intuitive.
Set up options include, but are not limited to: language, screen brightness, slideshow orientation – portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal), frequency (options range from 5 seconds to 24 hours), transition effect (fades, wipes, roll-ups, splits, turned page, crossword puzzle, and many others), and image display order.
The Philips 9FF2CME/37 provides three image display modes: Slideshow (auto/default) mode (I suspect most users will leave the DPF in this mode full-time), Browse (manual) mode, and Thumbnail mode (which allows users to add or delete images, change image orientation, save images to the internal memory, etc.).
How do I get my photos into the DPF?
The simplest method is to plug the memory media (SD/MMC, CF, MS, or xD) from your digital camera into the appropriate memory card slot on the DPF. The images can then be downloaded to the camera's internal memory or displayed on the LCD screen directly from the memory card. I transferred 34 images I’d shot over the past two years from my FXFoto image files to an upload file and then (via drag and drop) transferred the file to a 128MB CF card plugged into my SanDisk 12 in 1 card reader - this method works great for those who want to create truly personalized slide shows. Users can also hook up their digital cameras directly to the DPF and view the contents of the memory card (I didn’t try this method). Finally, users can transfer images directly from their computer to the DPF via the USB connection (I didn’t try this method, either).
"Real World" bottom line
As a veteran photographer who tests lots of digital cameras, I really like having the ability to preview what’s on my memory card (at a greatly increased size) before I decide which images I’m going download to my computer. I currently have 17GB of digital images stored on my hard drive, so any device that allows me to quickly and easily preview captured images saves me a lot of time, effort, and HD space.
I'm a dedicated member of the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) school of photography, so I very rarely modify my digital images (other than an occasional minor crop to remove an extraneous element). The Philips 9FF2CME/37 DPF’s internal image management software preserved my orientations (I shoot about 60-65 per cent of my images as verticals) and surprisingly the DPF also precisely preserved the exact hue (color), saturation, and contrast of each image.
The images in my basic slide show (currently 34 of my favorite test images)were shot with 31 different digital cameras - ranging from ultra compacts like the Canon Powershot SD1000 and the Nikon Coolpix S200 to Prosumer digicams like the Canon Powershot S3-IS and the Panasonic LX2 to semi-pro level dSLRs like the Pentax K10D. The Philips 9FF2CME/37 faithfully displays each image just as it came from the camera - a totally neutral device that doesn’t impose any hue/saturation or contrast interpolation whatsoever on the images displayed.
Technical Specifications
Effective viewing area: 6.6 in x 4.4 in (169.6 x 111.7 mm) (9”diagonal)
Resolution : 800pixels x 480 pixels
Connectivity: USB
Storage Media: Compact Flash (type 1), Memory Stick/Memory Stick Pro, SD/MMC, xD
Internal Storage: 110-150 images
Image File Format(s) supported: JPEG (Up to 12 Megapixels)
Playback modes: Browse, Slideshow, Thumbnail
Plug & Play: Windows 2000/XP or later
Street Price Range: $197.00 - $279.00
Included
Power cord, metal stand, user’s manual (on CD), Quick Start Guide, USB cables, and wall mount kit.
A Few Concerns
The DPF’s screen in vertical (portrait) mode crops horizontal (landscape) mode images slightly. If the screen is used in the horizontal (landscape) mode vertical images are displayed at a much smaller size, but cropped less. Eventually, I plan to put all my vertical images on the 9” DPF and all my horizontal images on the 7” DPF – which will eliminate the only real heartburn I have with either unit.
The DPF has a viewing angle of up to 170 degrees (vertical and horizontal) and that means photo fans won’t have to view the screen from directly in front of the device, but viewing the DPF at a significant upward or downward angle or from too far off the central axis causes images to lose detail and darken noticeably.
Some of the Philips 9FF2CME/37 9” Digital Photo Frame’s transitions are overly long and too complex. The Philips (7FF1AW/37) 7" Digital Photo Frame’s transitions are smoother and more professional looking.
Conclusion
Image quality is the single most important component of any digital image viewing device and the Philips 9FF2CME/37 9” Digital Photo Frame consistently and dependably delivers in the image quality department – the screen display is absolutely true to the original image. Philips got it almost perfect with their 7" Digital Photo Frame 7FF1AW/37 and I like their larger 9” DPF even more. Over the past several months I’ve seen several DPFs from manufacturers other than Philips that had dead pixels, contrast problems, and hue/saturation problems. At this point in time I wouldn’t trade either of my Philips DPFs for any other brand.
I received the Philips 9FF2CME/37 9” Digital Photo Frame from Hass MS&L (a public relations firm) in exchange for posting a fair and objective review on Epinions.com.
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