Second Chance, digital picture frame, estarling, feature, review, top

Next-Gen eStarling Picture Frame Hands On: Did They Fix It?

Remember the eStarling? It's the $249 digital picture frame from Think Geek that promised Wi-Fi connectivity, RSS downloads and the ability to email pictures directly to it, but ruined the Christmases of thousands of people who were sucked in by its false allure. It simply didn't work, so all of them were recalled. Now it's five months later, and we're the first ones to receive the new and improved model. Did they fix it?

At first we were startled to see a picture of the new eStarling picture frame on the front of the box, again showing that ugly eStarling logo that so marred the first iteration of the frame, except now it was on the bottom middle of the frame instead of the top right as it was before. But once we got it out of the box, it there was nary a logo to be found. In fact, it looks great. It has an attractive piano black finish that looks simple, elegant and nearly perfect. Come on over to the next page, and we'll tell you what else we noticed about this eStarling 2.0.

Also gone was that horrendous Wi-Fi antenna that stuck out the top like a stupid-looking sore thumb. Its 480x234 screen, measuring 7 inches diagonally, looked sufficiently big to be seen from a distance. Aside from the fact that there was no documentation or CD included in the package whatsoever, it was a promising out-of-box experience.

But wait a second here. That screen has almost a 16x9 aspect ratio, and it's not 4x3 either. It's neither one nor the other, and that gave us pause. It won't fit 4x3 photos which are the shape of most shots taken by consumers these days, nor will it fit 16x9 pics. There are going to be black bars on the screen somewhere in most cases. Uh-oh.

We loaded up some photos on a CompactFlash card and took a look at them in the frame, and were immediately disappointed with its low resolution. Not only were the pixels easily visible, the viewing angle of the screen was severely narrow. As we moved more than 45 degrees off-axis, the picture got significantly dimmer. Not good. Even looking at it straight on, the pictures looked noticeably dim.

Eager to set up the eStarling and explore its Wi-Fi and RSS feed capabilities, we went to the seeframe.com website, which serves as the repository for eStarling photos as well as the coordination point for RSS feed and emailed pictures that go directly to the frame. We set up the frame by downloading a small application from this website, and then connected the frame to a PC via its USB port. After noting our Wi-Fi network's ID, in choosing an email address, the eStarling congratulated us, telling us that "your frame is get connected and ready to use." Great, now we have set up us the bomb, and all your base are belong to us.

We entered the address of our Flickr RSS feed on this website, and also emailed a few pictures to our brand-new email address given to us by eStarling's seeframe.com site, and then it was time to sit back and wait for the pictures to appear on the frame that was connected to our Wi-Fi network. A few minutes later, there were a couple of the pictures from our Flickr RSS feed. The photos that we had emailed hadn't yet appeared, though. Anyway, it appeared that the Wi-Fi reception and connectivity problems of the ill-fated first version of the eStarling pitcher frame had been solved.

However, never mind that. The piss-poor image quality of this LCD panel made all that completely unimportant. The eStarling's screen is absolutely unacceptable. We tried displaying digital pictures of all different resolutions and aspect ratios on it, and all of them looked like we were viewing them on a cheap TV set. Yes, the images were in color, but that's about it. The display was just downright dim, blurry, and you could see scanlines and jaggies all through images that are normally tack-sharp. This display was so bad that it almost hurt our eyes to look at it.

The eStarling has improved since its first version, but until its manufacturer sees fit to put a display on board that has higher resolution than what you might find on a disposable kid's toy, we'd say you'd be making a big mistake to buy this eStarling picture frame. It has the worst LCD display we've ever seen—bad enough to make you want to send it back immediately. And that's just what we're going to do, again. – Charlie White

Product Page [eStarling]

3:40 PM on Thu May 10 2007
By Charlie White
6,517 views
23 comments

Comments

SamCostello at 02:21 PM on 05/10/07
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If anyone's interested in eStarling's thinking about the new frame/debacle with v. 1.0, we did an interview with their Exec VP. a few days back: http://www.wirelesspictureframe.com/2007/05/08/interview-w...
SamCostello at 02:23 PM on 05/10/07
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Should have added: Too bad v. 2.0 seems to have a new set of problems.
adammarc81 at 02:25 PM on 05/10/07
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Or you can get the momento (momentolive.com)
7" for 200 bucks.
9" for 300 bucks.
I have the 7" and the wifi works great, uses the shared pictures folder in vista as well as sideshow.(i don't use the sideshow part). Bottom line is its easy to use and works well. You can set up an email acount to send pictures to the frame directly, but they charge for this service. Giz unboxed it a few weeks ago.
notfred at 02:29 PM on 05/10/07
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Most digital frames have amazingly bad resolution. I'd rather show pictures on a dedicated PSP than almost all of them.
q4norm at 02:51 PM on 05/10/07
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From SamCostello's article, I quoteth:

"This summer we're also going to be offering a larger screen. That should be coming probably June or July"

if it looks all shinafied after that will blam stick this down his pants?
greysky at 03:08 PM on 05/10/07
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at 249 dollars I would say that they didn't fix it
CarbonatedWater at 03:36 PM on 05/10/07
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I'd rather show a video. A picture is worth a thousand words but a video is worth.....more..than that.
Luke at 03:40 PM on 05/10/07
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I'm more interested in the Aluratek 10.5" photo frame. It's under $200, but doesn't include Wifi capabilities. The resolution is much better at 1024x768, but I have yet to see any reviews anywhere.

http://www.aluratek.com/product_info.php?products_id=27
phi at 03:54 PM on 05/10/07
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i got v.1 for my parents and that was a disaster. I got v.2 in the mail the other day too. I wonder if the shoddy picture quality is enough for non-tech geeks.
fastm3driver at 04:10 PM on 05/10/07
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oooo, the Milwaukee Art museum. That is a sweet building
kaneshadow at 04:10 PM on 05/10/07
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"It won't fit 4x3 photos which are the shape of most shots taken by consumers these days, nor will it fit 16x9 pics."
You guys are thinking of TV. 4:3 is a ratio of width to height on a standard def TV. Standard photos are 4"x6". Also I've never heard of a 16:9 pic unless you're loading this puppy with movie screen caps.
Of course none of this matters since 480x234 is a ridiculous resolution any way you slice it. That's a 80:39 ratio by the way.
Tek Elements at 04:12 PM on 05/10/07
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I love the idea of this. I have an old Powerbook G4 that I was going to give to my daughter. I bet I could find a hack somewhere to turn that into a picture frame that can be addressed, have pics delivered to it, etc. If only there were time.
wfbnadador at 04:13 PM on 05/10/07
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milwaukee is my hometown... and that building is probably the one beautiful thing in the entire city.
gizak at 05:07 PM on 05/10/07
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*sigh* I had high hopes too. I want a picture frame that does this, but not that horribly hehe. I'd love to do the laptop thing, but I don't want to waste power consumption on that one purpose hehe. IMO, a wireless picture frame that does all this + has a motion sensor to turn the screen on when people walk by (to save power) would be perfect.
yertle at 07:04 PM on 05/10/07
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"After noting our Wi-Fi network's ID, in choosing an email address, the eStarling congratulated us you, telling us that "your frame is get connected and ready to use." Great, now we have set up us the bomb, and all your base are belong to us."

I'm fairly amused by the typo "us you" before they rail on the company for bad grammar. :)
framebuilder at 11:24 PM on 05/10/07
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There will be a new brand of Wifi Frame iGala coming out this summer. It has 8" 4:3 top of line LCD display (which will give you the image quality equivalent to your laptop) with support of flickr and email. It will also be cheaper than this one. Hang in there. I will keep you folks posted.
Baggo at 09:24 AM on 05/11/07
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I've had a very positive experience with the new frame. My wife emailed a picture from her cel phone of our daughter playing soccer. It showed up on the frame we put on our kitchen counter within 15 minutes. As I write this, I'm home from work with a sick son and my wife has taken our daughter (and her cel) to her Gymnastics "Award Ceremony." I can't wait for the pics!

As to the picture quality, it's not high def, but I can tell that the picture is my daughter playing soccer and not a bowl of fruit. It's definitely good enough for me.
LuckyMike at 11:13 AM on 05/11/07
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Gizmodo - Guys! You are not talking about the same estarling frame I have! Based on your comments, I'm surprised the poster above can even tell that the photo on top is the Milwaukee Museum! Seriously, the res and pic quality is fine, and the cool features more than make up for any lack in pic quality.
From: WWW.ZATZNOTFUNNY.COM: TRACKBACK at 09:14 AM on 05/14/07
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I do not bash products lightly, and I feel I have been extraordinarily patient with the eStarling digital photo frame. However, there is a limit. It is now mid-May, five months after the eStarling debacle started, and my parents’ main Christmas present is still not working as promised.
maddog at 05:47 PM on 05/20/07
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I think this review is overly harsh. I also had the disastrous 1.0 version of this frame and this version is much, much improved. I agree that the resolution of the screen is still sub-par and the aspect ratio is non-standard but overall this is a huge improvement over the first version.
smackswell at 06:16 PM on 05/20/07
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whatevs, my museum is in the pic.

GO BREWCITY!
Floobtronics at 08:45 AM on 05/22/07
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I made the mistake of buying one of these little disasters from Thinkgeek. It showed up yesterday, looked pretty, but hasn't done much of anything. Currently, their interface to add RSS feeds, at least Flickr ones, is borked. Nice ASPX error guys.

Ok, so I filed a support request on their site. I got an autoresponse back advising me to go to a particular site and login with a provided username/password to view my ticket status. Oops, the braintrust at eStarling removed the ability to login on the support site, so you can't view anything other than a message that tells you to login -- and NO login box.

I tossed a CF into the thing and was horrified at how bad this little display is. I wasn't expecting 1080p-like display performance, but man, the Atari 2600 I played Kaboom! on nearly 30 years ago looked better.

I just started the Thinkgeek RMA process. Hopefully they'll make the suck a distant memory, and fast. I wouldn't even wish this thing on someone I didn't like.
Floobtronics at 08:49 AM on 05/22/07
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By the way, if you need the phone number for these geniuses (it seems to have disappeared from eStarling.com), here you go...

Tel: (571) 348-3181

McLean, VA, so +1 for your outside of the US types..