Design
The 10-inch Kodak EasyShare EX1011 digital photo frame draws its look more from a traditional picture frame than many other digital offerings, sporting a solid angular outer frame compared to the commonly-seen one dimensional faceplates with clear perspex borders.
Though, like most digital frames, you can change the look of the unit by swapping the interchangeable faceplates. Kodak offers different alternatives including Clear or Frosted Floral Glass, or a Whiteboard faceplate that allows you to frame your photos with a writeable, wipe-on, wipe-off surface. No extra faceplates are included with the EX1011 but are available for purchase separately.
As for the layout of the controls, all the function buttons are lined up along the top of the frame, with the on/off switch and memory card slots on the left side, and the headphone jack, USB port, volume control and power input on the right. The frame can be displayed in landscape orientation using the stand on the back, or wall mounted in either landscape or portrait orientation via the keyhole slots.
Features
While this 10-inch frame is the top-end model from Kodak, sitting above the 7- and 8-inch models, its size isn't its biggest (or only) positive. The EX1011's built-in wireless connectivity means you can transfer media (images, music and video) to the frame from your Windows PC using Windows Media Player 11 -- sorry Mac fans. Overseas users can also connect to Kodak's online photo-sharing site and transfer photos online, but unfortunately this function is currently only available in the US, Canada and parts of Europe.
Even without Wi-Fi, the EX1011 is a feature-heavy digital frame that doesn't want for much in terms of functionality. Its straightforward interface supports JPEG image files, MP3 audio and multiple video formats (MOV, AVI, MPEG-1 and MPEG-4). All memory card types are supported, as well as 128MB of built-in storage.
The actual display area measures 225mm by 135mm at a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, leaving you with a decent-sized area to display photos, slideshows and movies. The screen size accommodates the 16:9 aspect ratio, which will resize your images if they aren't already wide-screen and you'll lose a bit of the picture or you can opt to view photos in 4:3 with black bars surrounding your images.
We're generally not a fan of the remotes that come with digital photo frames -- they're often cumbersome units that don't even look like they belong to the frame and are somewhat unnecessary when staring at a screen a quarter of the size of a computer monitor, let alone a TV. That said, the Kodak's remote is clearly-labelled and quite responsive and the only one we've seen branded with the company name.
Performance
Setting up the frame was a hassle-free experience, and we found the display bright and relatively sharp for the resolution. Viewing slideshows of our images from a memory card ran smoothly, as did transferring via USB.
One quirk to note is when transferring images to the frame's internal memory, images are not resized to match the resolution so if you're taking high-res photos straight from your memory card, you'll fill up the 128MB quite quickly -- especially if you've also got audio and video.
Music and video playback is acceptable, though the tinny built-in speakers are really there just to provide audio rather than solid stereo sound.
Disappointingly, the Wi-Fi connectivity is more of a token feature than the stand-out feature it should be. The restriction to PC-only wireless transfer and lack of integration to Kodak's online photo-sharing take away the wireless experience but it's still nice to have, especially if Kodak choose to include Australia in its service in the future.
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Photoshopper
14/02/2008, 09:02 AM
rating
2/10
I bought EX1011 specifically to allow me to keep my photos on my PC and share them wirelessly with the frame. I have WMP11 on an XP Pro machine and it works well. However, when I installed the frame I have a problem. The frame can see my network and WMP11 can see the frame, but the frame cannot see my PC on the network. I have been in touch with Kodak tech assistance which, so far has not been particularly helpful. I believe there may be an issue with media sharing/Digital Management Rights but I have not yet been able to fix this. I will likely be returning the frame If I cannot enable wireless sharing.
Pros: Great concept.
Cons: Poor implementation (at least for my setup). Tech support from Kodak has not been steller.
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spronovo
28/01/2008, 06:31 AM
rating
3/10
I bought the EX1011 wireless digital frame thinking i would be able to painlessly stream the pictures (10,000+) from my PC to my digital frame, unfortunately there are key features missing to this frame to allow this scenario to really work.
1) Display pictures in random order
I have 10,000+ pictures on my PC. I want them to be shown in random order on the digital frame, Everytime the frame restart is powered ON/OFF i want to have a different seed for the random generator to be used such that everyday there is a fresh new set of pictures being displayed on the screen.
2) Resume streaming after being powered ON
As it is, each time the digital frame is turned OFF than back ON it goes back to the main screen and i have to manually select again to stream pictures from my PC. I want to be able to use the built-in timer to only display pictures on the frame during the day, in the morning when the frame starts up i want it to automatically start streaming again without ANY user intervention.
These two features are critical for a seamless streaming experience, without it this frame wireless capability is only usefull to transfer picture to the built-in memory... which is a scenario i just don't care about.
I'll be bringing back this frame to the store. Hopefully these problem will be addressed in the future and i can consider Kodak again for digital frame for myself or gift to my friends and family.
Pros: Nice picture frame if you don't care about streaming pictures to it.
Cons: Streaming feature is useless, wifi is only functional to transfer picture to built-in memory of the digital picture frame.
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