Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12410 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Linx
• Model: LDVPHOTO8I
• Released on: 2006-10-29

Manufacturer's Description

Bring your photo's back to Life! Relive your treasured memories and bring your old pictures back to LFE with Linx digital photo frames!
	High Resolution, 8" Screen The Linx PHOTO8i uses a high resolution 8" digital LCD panel that enables you to get the very best out of your pictures and to relive those cherished memories in the best possible way. Why is high resolution important? Quite simply, the more pixels you have on display the clearer and crisper the image looks. So Linx use a high resolution screen in the PHOTO8i to ensure that the images you are displaying look as clear and crisp as possible. Brightness and Contrast Controls The PHOTO8i gives you the added control of contrast and brightness adjustment which allows you to make slight corrections to the light levels and the brightness of the photo frame.
	Interchangeable Frames! Everyone likes to change things around every now and then, so why should you have to compromise with your Linx photo frame? Well you don't have to! The PHOTO8i comes with a free interchangeable frame pack made up of 4 magnetic, clip-on frames worth £19.99! These free, interchangeable frames come in White, Pink, Silver and Black giving you a colour for every occasion or room style.
	4-in-1 Memory Card Reader No PC? Don't worry! The PHOTO8i has a built in card reader that allows you to take the memory card straight from your digital camera and simply insert into your PHOTO8i and start viewing your pictures! The 4-in-1 card reader allows your frame to read either MS (Memory Stick), MS-PRO (Memory Stick Pro), MMC (Multi Media Card) or SD (Secure Digital) giving compatibility for most common digital cameras.
	USB Connectivity As USB memory sticks are becoming more and more popular and inexpensive now these provide an ideal way of storing your photos. At Linx we have taken this on board and included a high speed USB port in the PHOTO8i so that you can simply plug in your USB stick and view your photos through the easy to use menu's on the PHOTO8i
	Built-in Battery Wouldn't it be great to have your digital photo frame on display where everyone can see it? Or even better, wouldn't it be great to be able to pass it round when friends and family come over for even easier viewing of all your pictures? Well the Linx PHOTO8i allows you to do just that! The built-in battery allows the frame to run for around 2hours without mains power - this is perfect for those living room view sessions!
	Stereo Speakers - find the perfect sound track to your pictures The ideal accompaniment to your photo's - the built in speakers allow you to listen to your favorite MP3 track either on its own or while your viewing your images. The PHOTO8i also allows you to view video clips (MPEG4) in the same way that you can listen to MP3's or view photo's. This is great for when you take short video clips on your digital camera of those "can't miss moments" such as your child first bike ride, or your friend's birthday party!

Box Contents

• 8" Photoframe
• AC Adapter
• UK Power Lead
• Instruction Manual
• Remote Control inc. Battery
• Audio Lead
• RCA Connection Cables
• Frame Stand

Customer Reviews

Great performer
Don't be put off by all the complaints about the manual. Sure it's pretty useless but it is only for a photo frame. You can pretty much work out what buttons to press by trial and error in 15 mins. I bought this one for resolution, battery option and video playback and was not disappointed. For these features at £20 more than one at PC World without any of these is £20 well spent.

Plus points : Good resolution - compared against a 480/400 x 234 then the difference is stark. Those ones are fine as a Xmas present for your gran. Divx playback works a treat. Battery option for me was a must. Ignore the person who expects the battery to last for days or gives you the impression that the battery will run down in the time it takes to pass it around the room. Lasts long enough to free you from being 2m from a power socket in normal usage. Remote control is actually a plus - didn't make this a buying criterium but actually very handy. Preview mode good where it displays 10 thumbnails (bit slowly) and even more useful a sort of directory browser which shows the filename and a thumbnail - handy when you need to make a note of the filename so that you can order a print later.

Negatives: User interface a bit quirky and the manual will not help you. There will be things where you think "it doesn't work". In fact it does - you have not set it up right. For example to get a slide show to work needs a setting of one of the Browse settings from One to Auto. Displaying in "full screen" rather than "normal" avoids the black bars (which are about 0.8cm either side) but removes the facility to rotate images and also then expands the top half of a portrait mode photo to full frame cropping the bottom half of the photo. Zoom seems to work well but suspends a slide show and even if you zoom back out to 100% you need to manually advance to kickstart the slideshow. Imagine if you don't use it regularly you will forget what buttons to push.

Other: you get audio out and video out (with leads) and MP3 playback (not particularly useful in my mind but each to their own). They have even given EQ settings and reverb settings (e.g. hall) for the audio - which is quite good enough for video playback but not exactly going to get you to chuck out your iPod. Loads of control over video settings - brightness, contrast, hue, saturation. Looked fine to me on default settings.

Good frame but it's not 8 inch
Like most products, this photo-frame has good points and bad points.

The good points:-
- Sharp clear picture
- Looks good
- Good build quality
- The battery allows you to pass the frame around, just like you would pass printed photos
- The remote control works well
- Will take SD card and USB
- It can output to the TV
- Can play videos and Sound
- The manual's translation gives you some good laughs

The bad points:-
- It's only 7.25 inches across the diagonal, bit cheeky to call it 8 inch
- The manual is difficult to understand
- Does not auto start
- Does not do a clean transition, it first blanks the screen then loads next photo
- Limited video formats

Overall I'm pleased with the product

Addition 1-10-07
Thought I would clarify a couple of questions asked by reviewers.
The USB connector does not connect to a PC; it is there to play from a USB Flash drive. If you can't get the frame to play from the USB, try removing the SD card first.

Could be better
I was looking for a digital photo frame that is easy to use for an elderly relative who has no technical knowledge or ability. My main requirements were that it should start directly into a slide show and the pictures should be shown in random order.

Unfortunately this frame does not start directly in "slideshow" mode when first powered up but requires a single "enter" button push to start it off. If the frame is then turned off with the remote (actually only turning off the LCD display) then it will resume the slideshow when next powered up.

The random picture selection is available on this frame but I have noticed that pictures are often repeated just 2 or 3 pictures after it was last seen. I have 500 pictures on the card and this repeat happens more frequently than I would expect from chance alone. I suspect the random algorithm could be improved, perhaps by shuffling all the pictures, showing them all, then reshuffling etc.

One criticism is the maximum time that it stays on one picture is only 3 minutes. I would have preferred the option for longer, say at least 1 hour before changing to the next. That way it would be weeks before pictures are repeated if a few hundred pictures are stored. If bored with the current picture one can always move to the next with the remote control.

The remote control receiver is on the side of the frame, behind the front surround. Assuming one normally uses the remote control in front of the frame it needs a surface behind the frame to reflect the remote IR beam back to the receiver. In some situations I found the remote control will just not work as the remote beam from the control is not finding the receiver. Most other frames have a small hole in the front surround for a forward facing IR receiver.

The specified screen size is 720 x 480 pixels but when I make the pictures that ratio (actually I use 1440 x 960 as the screen has a 2x zoom facility) then the aspect ratio is not correct and a circle is squashed down by about 5% to an oval. Not much perhaps but I notice that people are slightly short and fat. As the screen is only small the resolution is adequate to give sharp looking pictures but in computer terms it's only VGA.

The screen sometimes flickers when turned on but this does go away after a few minutes.

Colorimetry is reasonably good but detail near to peak white is crushed and lost if the screen contrast is set to normal i.e. 0. I found reducing contrast to -6 revealed the lost details. Similarly black detail can be lost if the brightness is not increased but this depends on levels of ambient lighting.

The memory card slot is easily accessible, unlike a Jobo display I tried where the slot was so close to the front surround it was very difficult to pull the card out.

There is no internal memory. This would have been useful to pre-program a large number of stock pictures into the frame which could then be supplemented with pictures from a card.

If I mix MPEG movies with JPG slides it will not show the movies when running through a slideshow. This would have been a nice feature. It is possible to show movie clips if selected via menus but this is far too complicated for my elderly relative so I have had to limit myself to JPGs only. A great pity.

In conclusion this is the best screen I could find for my application, and better value than many, but I'm still looking for something better. Perhaps I will have to wait for the next generation.