Digital Spectrum U-40101 10.4" MemoryFrame MF-8104 Premium Wireless Digital Picture Frame

As an amateur photographer armed with a Nikon D80 I have taken over 7000 pictures in the last year. A good portion are throwaways but I still have 6300 images spanning 23 or so gigabytes on various computers in my house. I subscribe to Flickr and generally upload the"best" of the lot or pictures that my family might enjoy seeing. Digital image management has turned into something of a chore and since we rarely print our pictures anymore, my wife wanted an easy way to display pictures of family events. We thought that a digital picture frame might fit the bill. I wanted one with wireless capabilities that I could literally "set and forget". Point it to my Flickr account and have it pull images automatically for a slideshow. Frames with wireless capability are still somewhat rare and expensive and after doing all my web research, I decided to try the Digital Spectrum MF-8104. I read plenty of negative reviews but chalked them up to inexperience or unwillingness to intimately learn the intricacies of a complicated device. Well, I purchased one for our 24th anniversary and as it turns out, all the negative reviews were right on the money.

It arrived yesterday and was well packed and individual pieces were all wrapped and protected. The wood frame however was damaged, scratched right through the finish in three places and also dented and dinged at the bottom and sides. Strike one. I plugged the frame in turned it on and after a short boot-up period it came up to the main menu. I pulled the protective tab from the remote battery and attempted to use the IR remote to continue the setup. No response. Checked battery polarity, ok. Pulled the battery and checked it with a volt meter and it was very close to the rated 3VDC. So, dead remote. Strike two. I used the menu controls on top of the frame to continue with the setup and although clumsy, I got fairly adept at using them. Within 5 minutes I had the frame connected to my WAP, had done an automatic software update and input my Flickr user account name(password is not required). The frame dutifully began pulling down my images. Image quality was acceptable but resolution is only 800X600 @256K colors(18 bit). Color dithering is pretty bad when viewing images closely. Back to Flickr. I noticed that the slideshow started repeating fairly quickly. For some reason, if you select "all" images in the Flickr account setup, it was only pulling the first 30 or so out of 556. I don't understand why but I think it only displayed images without a tag or in a set. You would think that it would include everything in my account, but apparently not. Besides "all", you can also set it to only display pictures with tags or in a set and so I moved all 556 images into a new set called "frame" and was able to select and display them. It is supposed to auto update the image list when new pictures are added to my account. We'll see. A few more words on the interface. It's fairly horrible. There is no "back" or "up" button to navigate back one level in the menu. You have to hit "menu" again and start over from scratch. Also, you can set time and date, which I did. I then found a "sync clock" setting which I used and then noticed that the clock was an hour slow. I checked the time zones and had set it to Eastern Standard Time (US). There was no Eastern Daylight Time setting, so clock sync via network will only work correctly when not using daylight savings time. I searched, read the user manual and could not find a "daylight savings time" setting anywhere. An onerous omission.

Another serious problem is that the frame won't read pictures that are anywhere but the root directory on your flash media. My wife asked if she could view her pictures from a recent trip. It's a Sony camera that uses Memory Sticks and like most cameras, it puts its pictures into a folder on the MS. Even though the box states Memory Sticks are supported, there is no built-in reader for them. Ok, no problem, I took the reader from my computer and plugged it into the USB port on the frame. It scanned the MS and then stated that it couldn't find any pictures. That's a serious Strike Three and an unbelievable omission. Didn't they think that people would pull their flash media from their cameras and stick it into the frame for immediate viewing? Do they seriously expect that you would want to move all of your pictures around on your flash media first?

Another minor issue is that the power connector end of the power cord (which looks exactly like a laptop power supply)has a 90 degree bend. If you hang the frame on the wall in the "landscape" position, all the weight of the cords and brick (depending on how high you hang it) will be pulling on that bend and I can guarantee that the cord will break eventually. Bad design.

I was on the fence about RMAing this back to my e-tailer (and eating shipping both ways) but the more I think about the serious flaws coupled with the premium price the more I am resolved to sending it back.

On a plus note their tech support answered the phone within minutes and agreed to send a new remote and wood frame...

**Update**- Still have not gotten my replacement remote control or wood frame. They just released a firmware update V.2.2.5.0 on 5/19/08 that fixes 2 of the major flaws. There is now a Daylight Savings Time setting and the frame now reads pictures directly from subdirectories on flash media. Still on the fence about RMAing it. My e-tailer wants a 15% restocking fee.

I bought this for my mother after very careful research into all the frames on the market. When you boil it down you need

1. A good looking picture - has that
2. Wireless - so she can see the pictures without having to download, get emails etc. I found it easy to set up. The frame updated itself afterwards which improved the interface.
3. Good integration with picture sharing sites - let's face it Flickr is the the best and so having that built in is essential.
4. It carries on where it left off - other frames don't do this. Why the should the user have to tell the frame to pictures from the internet every time you turn it on - that's madness. So if your set it to use Flickr then it will do that even after you turn it on and off again. Plus you can set it to goto sleep at night and wake up in the morning, saving power and the screen.

I found the remote worked well, it's no different than my Bose remote that's 10 years old and still working fine.

I can't answer why previous reviewers had technical problems but after receiving the frame I had my wep configured and had the digital frame connected to my wireless network within 20 minutes. I haven't used any of the websites like flickr for picture slideshows but I did configure Windows Media Player 11 and have been streaming jpg's from my computer to the frame for the last couple of hours. Image quality is as I expected: superb.

I performed an online upgrade via the wireless network and it worked flawlessly.

I haven't gotten around to test the video or mp3 capabilities yet but I did put in a sd card and the frame does read and display jpg's within folders from the sd card.

I can't compare the digital spectrum u-40101 to its competition because this is the first digital picture frame I have ever toyed with. So far, this device has done exactly what it advertised, and relatively easily.

Cons - It would be nice if the frame had a html interface that one could access via a web browser for configuration purposes.

I have to admit I was reluctant to buy this frame with all the negative reviews, but it was the only frame that included the features I wanted including wireless, RSS feeds, uploads with out restarting and nice picture. This frame has all of the above and contrary to many of the other reviews I have read it was easy to set-up. I think I had it up and running, connected to my network, and downloading pics from framchannel.com under 20 minutes.

First of all to be fair, this is a beautiful looking frame and photos looked nice on it.

I purchased this frame for its networking capabilities but was disappointed in how difficult it was to set up. I understand my experience may not be indicative of others but for me the benefits of having a wireless frame outweighed the high cost. It was not convenient.

Set up was tenuous and after several hours of trying to get the frame to recognize my home network I gave up. It just has to be easier.

Before buying I did read a review where I think a more tech savy person than me said it took him a while to get the frame online if he did at all.

I sent the item back and tried estarlings wireless frame version which I set up in about 10 minutes and love!!

This frame again is beautiful and the display is very nice but there are other cheaper frames that do the same thing. I paid a price for wireless technology and without that technology working for me, it was not worth the price premium.

Amazon was great with delivery and return so at least that part of the purchase experience was good.