Touch Screen Digital Photo Frames
Pandigtial's PanTouch Display Technology For Photographic Images
On-screen icons indicate where to touch and swipe on the surrounding matte for control and access to digital images, MP3 music and video clips.
As digital-camera technology rushes headlong into the 21st Century, image-viewing technology is still stuck in the 20th century. One of the great debates is over how to print the image on paper: inkjet versus traditional silver halide methods. Sneaking up is the ubiquitous Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screen. With widespread application in television and computer monitors, the economies of scale of their production are now making them affordable for displaying photographs.
They combine the twin attributes of the framed picture and the variety of the photo album. Instead of having a single picture taking pride of place in your home, now it is possible to make this the whole photo album.
In line with new applications of technology, features are fluid, as manufacturers search for those consumers perceive are the most desirable. The new range of digital photo frames from Pandigital feature a touch sensitive spots on the matte border of the image. On-screen icons indicate the spots and their functions.
"Our goal in designing the new PanTouch line of frames was to make them so simple to use that the consumer would never have to refer to a user manual," said Dean Finnegan, CEO and founder, Pandigital. "The new PanTouch user interface is incredibly intuitive and user-friendly. It's the perfect complement to the frame's sophisticated, upscale look, incredible image quality and popular extra features such as ample internal memory, multimedia support and WiFi compatibility."
To ensure ease of connectivity the new PanTouch range frames are WiFi and Bluetooth-compatible, enabling downloading photos to the frame via a WiFi connection from Google's photo sharing site, Picasa Web Albums. Also, customers can sync their Pandigital frame with a Bluetooth-enabled device, such as a mobile phone or PDA, to enjoy even more images. All models feature a memory card reader for loading images from the most popular digital media, as well as standard and mini USB 2.0 ports for a direct connection to a PC or digital camera. The onboard memory in the 7-inch model can store 800 images while the top of the line 10.4-inch model holds up to a massive 3200.
The PanTouch frames go one step further than traditional photographs as they can to play MP3 music files for background music for photo slideshow and they can also play full motion video clips. There are programmable on/off times, clock, calendar and alarm clock functions providing a variety of ways to use their frame.
Pandigital’s claim their frames are optimized for the 4:3 true photo resolution and this is the most popular format for photo viewing and digital camera image capture. This suggests the frames are ideal for all those family and holiday snapshots taken with compact point and shoot digital cameras as most DSLR’s have an aspect ratio of 3:2 from their different shape sensor. This is an area to watch in the future.
