Digital Picture Frame & Photo Sizes

My in-laws received this Westinghouse DPF-0802 Digital Picture Frame for Christmas.

They also received a 1Gig card which came preloaded with 512mb of family photos. 

The frame has a resolution of 800×600 pixels and has 128mb of internal flash memory.  It supports the following memory cards: CF I,II / MD / MS / MS Pro / MS Duo / MS Pro Duo / SD / MMC / XD.

I located a very nice free image resizing program called VSO Image Resizer and promptly went about resizing all photos stored on the 1g card; some up to 5mb in size.  I  reduced the disk usage from 512mb to 30mb !

I wanted to copy some photos to the internal memory but they didn’t have an appropriate cable (USB to mini-USB).  I went shopping and a basic mini-usb to usb cable cost $27. Rediculous.  Fortunately I passed by the console accessories aisle and found a mini-usb to usb and charger combo cable for the PSP for $4.95.  I bought it and it worked fine.

Though with the Image Resizer program, the internal memory was sufficient to hold all their photos, it became clear that the easiest workflow would be for Sue to simply pull the 1gig card from the Picture Frame, plug it into her laptop which has a camera card slot, copy over the photos she wants and plug the card back into her Picture Frame.

I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a universal card adapter to  buy.   The  Picture  Frame  with it’s support for numerous cards could actually serve as an adapter to move files from one card to another.  I  was able to copy photos from Jane’s new Sony Cybershot camera.   She didn’t have her USB pc cable but I was able to read her Memory Stick Pro  Duo 2g card from the Picture Frame and connect my laptop using the cable I bought to download them.

Technology gets more accessible but remains as hard for normal  folks to use.

Survivor China: James is a class act

Never have a group of folks been so scared of repercussions for going behind someone’s back when voting a trusted tribe member off.  James was physically strong, assertive, a force.  But I have to say James’  final words were the classiest I’ve heard.  He basically said he wasn’t mad, they did what they had to do,  it was a smart move on their part, and the  most impressive, he blamed himself for throwing the dice one too many times and not playing one of the TWO idols in his possession.

Hats off to you James!

I’d like to see a show where the “social” aspect is deemphasized and the “survivor” skills more emphasized.  The most worthy ones rarely win.

My favorite Christmas song renditions

O Come All Ye Faithful – Amy Grant
Angels – Jim  Brickman
Little  Drummer Boy – Vienna Boys Choir
Deck the Halls – Mannheim Steamroller
Silent Night – Mannheim Steamroller
Carol of the Bells – Mannheim Steamroller

Watching TV online

Dianne Holloway wrote an article today about the experience of watching TV shows online.  For the most part, she is right, the experience is degraded from  watching it on TV and you probably would only consider it if you missed a show and wanted to catch up.  But she did not explain the other side of the coin because the experience can be quite nice and I want  to encourage other networks to do what ABC is doing in providing streaming HD for some of their shows.  Here is the email I sent to Dianne in response to her article:

Hello Dianne,

I enjoyed your article about the state of online viewing of missed episodes.  For the  most part,  that’s why we view shows online, to catch up on shows we missed. Although MOST shows are of lesser quality than we would find on the tube, the convenience  and ability to catch up is worth it.

In the case of Thursday night, the story is different and I feel you  left out this important point in your article.  My daughter and I watch Ugly Betty religiously,  it’s a bonding thing; but our entire family of five enjoy Survivor at the same  hour on Thursday night as well.  We opt to watch Survivor live and my daughter and I will watch UG days later at our convenience. 

Now ever since I got my relatively modest 32″ HD TV,  I’ve become a HD snob and avoid regular programming whenever possible.  The experience is so much more enjoyable.  I don’t sacrifice that with Ugly Betty online because it is one of the  shows  that  ABC makes available in streaming HD!  My daughter and I snuggle up on a bed or  couch and take in UB on my widescreen  laptop, wirelessly, in beautiful HD!  Having the picture just 2 feet away in HD is actually pretty cool.   If you haven’t experienced this I recommend it.  I even have an extra long VGA cable that I can plug-in to my HD TV  and it’s  as if we were watching UB live in full HD, on-demand!  It’s a great  experience and one worth sharing with your  audience.

There probably aren’t that many folks with HD TV’s that don’t pay for  HD programming through their cable/satellite,  but I happen to be one of them.  We only have basic cable with no HD stations;  but  I receive ABC,NBC,FOX,CBS,PBS over-the-air in HD.  I hope the other networks copy ABC and we start seeing more and more streaming HD shows  online.

Regards,

Alan Kleymeyer

 

MXF References

Our value proposition at DVFilm is support of the MXF file format (Material  eXchange  Format).

Here are some references about the  format:

MXF  Primer -  Go HERE and click the  Read The Primer link in the  upper left corner (I hate frames)

MFXLIB – opensource C++ library