 What a difference a year makes. |
| Review Date: November 12, 2008 |
| Reviewer: John Brayton, |
I bought the Kodak EX 811 a year ago for my parents which was a wireless 8" digital frame. Unfortantely, many of the features were not fully implemented, and overall, the frame was a disappointment. Given that Kodak has had a year to get it right, I purchased the W1020 for myself to check it out. Wow. Kodak got this one right. I have only had a chance so far to configure the wireless feature and connect it to my online gallery, so there are many other features that I have yet to try. But my first impressions are very good from the nicely implemented on screen interface with a touch panel to features that were previously not implemented like power on/off which actually starts displaying photos from any source including the online gallery. I noticed that other features that were missing in the previous version are now available like a random display option so you do not always see the photos in the same order.
I am now hoping that I can now upgrade my parent's EX 811 to the latest firmware to resolve some of the issues that the older frame had. I may write another review after I have had to chance to explore all the features of this frame, but it is looking like this frame is a real winner. |
Wireless capabilities better than expected
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| Review Date: December 1, 2008 |
| Reviewer: P. Adhi, Chicago, IL USA |
I bought this as a very early Christmas present for my parents, thinking that they would need my help to set it up. I was blown away by how easy it was to setup. Within 10 minutes of unpacking the frame, I had pictures from my Kodak Gallery account displayed on the frame.
Although the interface isn't perfect, it works the way it was intended and is fairly intuitive. The touch sensors on the border of the frame allow for an easy (and somewhat cool) mechanism to navigate around the frame.
I read reviews about poor image quality, but I personally found the image quality to be outstanding. Even from across the room, the pictures were bright and sharp. I have never before written a review about a product, but I was so pleasantly surprised by this frame that I felt I had to.
So far, my parents love the gift. I can remotely upload pictures to KodakGallery, and within minutes it shows up on their frame. |
Extermely versatile and just plain COOL!
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| Review Date: November 12, 2008 |
| Reviewer: R. West, |
| Just bought the Kodak W1020 and it far exceeds my expectations. Picture quality is best I've seen and you have 4 options to show digital pictures: SD/MMC card, Via 802.11 Wireless network to your PC picture library, pictures copied to the frame, and from pictures published on the internet. You can also set up some very neat Internet RSS feeds to show you weather forecasts and traffic updates. You can even set this thing up to turn itself on and off at specific times. We've got ours setup to come in the morning on work dayo show us the weather and traffic conditions. You'll need to setup a free account on Framechannel.com to access the RSS feeds and it takes a bit of manipulation to really figure out how to customize them to your hearts desire. It will also play music although the speakers are not exactly high fidelity, still you can do and it can access mp3 files from all 4 sources. The only trick is that to completely configure the frame you will have to load the s/w from Kodak and use it to connect to the frame; all easily done.. but as always the manual is not very specific on what you can do from what interface. The user interface on the frame is very easy to use .. but using the keyboard is tedious as you can only scroll left and right via the button interface so working your way through the keyboard is one long process as you go from row to row. If you don't need the wireless features and just want to show show pictures.. I'd probably not buy this. I would not give to say.. my elderly parents as it pretty sophisticated and too complicated for them to want to mess with. That being said.. we love this thing and it is the most innovative electronic gadget I've seen in quite some time. It is an absolutely cool device and is an amazing media viewer. THe frame is well constructed and well made. My kids already dropped it and it has survived thus far. The ac power cord is bit short if you intend to hang it on a wall, but works good enough for coffee tables. The user interface buttons on the frame disappear completely when you are not messing with them which .. again.. is just cool. Can you tell I highly recommend this! A definite cool present! |
W1020 - Recommended Software to use with
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| Review Date: May 23, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Patrick Mccabe, florida |
With the right software this frame is excellent. Use Picasa (free from Google) [...] to organize and manage collections, give star ratings to your favorites. Save copy to temp location on hard drive.
Use the excellent re-sizer and manager software "FastStone" [...] (Also Free for personal home use) to re-size frame images to 848 X 480 to get exact frame size at maximum resolution and minimum file sizes in 16X9 formats. Do not use smart crop (fastone) or your pictures will get headless people.
Save re-sized photos to SD or USB storage in folder "pictures". Do not let frame re-size pictures.
Save your MP3's to a folder called "Music"
Works like a charm. Frame is very fast in this format w/o any hang-ups, and at no additional costs. Images are truly amazing.
Additional info:
Delete all pictures etc. from frames internal memory card (this forces frame to look else ware for pictures). Set my slide show option (frame option) to use SD / USB card, random - save settings in frame. Set music to SD / USB card, select all music files, random play, also set slide show to random.
All wireless options work as advertised, including all the web options. HOWEVER, it helps to know what you are doing. If you are new to the technology just use the SD card methods or have a knowledgeable teenager or techie help you set it up for wireless / web operations.
Use a descent set of computer speakers (powered) connected to the audio out port on the side of the frame for better sound, this will by-pass the internal undersized speakers. This frame has many more options than most other frames on the market. With those options, comes complexity. Taken as a whole, this is one technical marvel for a good price. Stick to the basics and you will be more than pleased. The only other frame to come close to competing with this one is a Sony. Without sound, without wireless, without internet, without mp3 player input and all at a higher cost. Kodak did an excellent job of designing a feature rich frame on the cutting edge of technology.
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Worked like a charm, eventually.
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| Review Date: June 7, 2009 |
| Reviewer: C. baray, san jose, ca |
We had been giving the grandparents frames over the years, with updated SD cards, but they seemed to get old within 2-3 months. Wireless, with an RSS feed seemed to be the way to go to keep the frames "current".
Except that we didn't want only the new photos to appear, since it was going to be wireless and virtually unlimited capacity, we figured that lifetimes could be configured.
Using Yahoo! Pipes, we were able to get an RSS feed up that will pick random sets of images to display, changing each day. So that was fine.
The frame takes the feed perfectly too. I had a minor problem with our frame, after the first day, it had partially reset and the webserver on the frame wasn't responding (computer could not connect to frame). Resetting to factory defaults and "rebooting" the frame got things back up and running.
Have even given a frame to our nanny, who wanted her children's photos integrated into the random rotation too. Using FrameChannel's setup, we were able to combine images uploaded to FrameChannel combined with our RSS feed.
It has worked so well, that while setting it up for others, my wife has decided that she wants 1 or 2 herself (she might be getting worn out by the live version of our son and prefers the quiet, still version?!?)
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