Product Description

Now you can receive digital photos from all your friends and family, from just about anywhere in the world without a computer! It's a brand new way to stay connected with the people you care about most.Here are some of the unique ways your CEIVA Digital Photo Receiver can help keep you in touch with your loved ones: Receive up to 20 new photos a day from friends and family; Display a slide show of up to 20 photos at a time; Lock your Receiver on to your favorite shot.If you have a computer, or give a friend or family member who has a computer access to your Receiver, you can also: Create custom slide shows that run automatically, showcasing your favorite pictures; Set your Receiver to turn on and off automatically so that it 's awake when you are; Store and manage your pictures, access albums, and remotely manage your Receiver from any web browser, adding and deleting pictures from the actual Receiver in your home, with your account at Ceiva.com; Send photos to your own Receiver, or to others Receivers; Turn photos into one-of-a-kind cards with personal messages; View personalized entertainment and information channels such as news, sports and local weather.

Product Details

• Brand: Ceiva
• Model: LF2000
• Released on: 2000-03-24
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x 1.20" w x 10.00" l, 4.00 pounds

Features

• An ideal gift for even the most non-technical parents or friends, the Ceiva digital photo receiver downloads your latest digital photos from the Web and displays them in full color
• Simple plug-and-play connection and 1-button operation--owner or user needs no computer skills or Internet access
• Upload photos to your Ceiva Web account; the Ceiva downloads automatically and displays them in slide-show mode
• Sharp, bright VGA resolution (640 x 480 pixels)--thousands of colors
• Requires subscription to Ceiva Network; low monthly rates available

Amazon.com Review
Ceiva put the future in an unassuming black picture frame with this amazingly simple yet innovative product. This Internet-enabled frame makes it so easy to receive and display digital photos that even the most tech-shy relatives will love it. The traditional frame houses an LCD screen that displays up to 20 pictures in a single-view or slide-show format. Once a day, the frame dials in to Ceiva's Web site and downloads any new photos that have been sent to you (or that you've uploaded). What's truly amazing is that it works flawlessly--it's a cutting-edge technology idea that's well executed.

The frame itself is a handsome classic black with a black matte. It's about the size of a standard 8-by-10-inch frame, and the viewing area is about 5 by 7 inches. The display resolution is 640 x 480 VGA, and the images are displayed as JPEGs. We were impressed with the picture quality, especially considering the display is passive matrix--colors were a bit washed out, but otherwise pictures were sharp, bright, and looked good. The viewing angle isn't great--you won't be able to see pictures well from the side--but overall, the screen worked very well, even in relatively bright light.

You do the bulk of your setup online at Ceiva's Web site. Here, you can lock, delete, upload, or send photos, and you can adjust the rest of your settings, such as the slide-show interval or the time the Ceiva turns off the display every night. (The standard setting shuts it off from 12 a.m. to 4 a.m.) Within your account, you can choose who can send pictures to you (your "Buddy list"). Your buddies don't need to own Ceiva photo frames, but they have to get Ceiva accounts, which are free. In addition to photos, you and your friends can send and receive any kind of digital image, from hand-drawn cards to scanned art. Subscription channels even let you get comics, weather and traffic reports, and horoscopes on a daily basis. Ceiva's site also provides simple tools to add messages to your photos.

The controls on the Ceiva are extremely easy to use--there is one button that adjusts brightness and another button to stop the slide show and dial-up on demand. If you want to download pictures immediately (for instance, right after your mother calls and tells you she just sent a new batch), you press and hold the settings button on the frame until it connects.

You don't need an extra telephone line to use the Ceiva--the photo frame uses your existing line for just a few minutes every night. Ceiva provides a Y-connector in the box to make it easy for you to plug the frame into your phone jack without disconnecting your phone. The photo frame also doesn't require you to have an Internet connection to download photos, although a subscription is required to download photos. The subscription costs $79.95 per year to maintain this service via a local connection, and multi-year plans are available starting at less than $5 a month. However, if you want to upload pictures, send them to other people's Ceivas, or modify certain frame settings, you'll need to use an Internet connection.

Overall, our experience using the Ceiva was simply wonderful. It's intended to be simple to use, and it does a great job receiving and displaying photos. It strikes us as the perfect gift for your mom and dad, your grandparents, or any long-distance friend who is computer-shy. Not to mention that the Ceiva photo frame is just plain cool! --Michael Lewis

Pros:

• Extremely easy to use
• Good picture quality
• No existing Internet account necessary
• Others can send you pictures for free

Cons:

• You must adjust most of your settings on the Web site

From the Manufacturer
The Ceiva digital photo receiver will be the best gift you ever give. We get letters every day telling us what a difference a Ceiva Receiver has made in the lives of the many grandparents, aunts, uncles and parents who receive daily pictures of the grandchildren and family.

The Receiver's owner doesn't need a computer to receive and display great digital photos. It's simple to set up--once a Ceiva Receiver is registered, the owner of the Receiver just plugs in the power and the phone line, presses one button, and from then on, up to 20 new pictures of the grandkids can appear automatically as a slide show every morning. If you are giving the Ceiva Receiver as a gift, you can register the Receiver before you send it, so it's all ready to go.

The Ceiva Receiver is designed to resemble a picture frame, with a sleek 8 x 10-inch design that fits in with all decors.

How does the Ceiva Receiver Work?
The Receiver automatically makes a short local call through an existing phone line each night to get pictures sent to it. There's no interruption to current phone service, and no toll charges. It's silent and secure.

Each Ceiva Receiver requires a monthly subscription. Low monthly rates cover all needed processing, storage and transmission costs for receiving photos, and allow unlimited sending of photos from family and friends.

We recently received a copy of a thank you letter sent to one of our customers from his grandmother, who said: "As I sit in my big, comfortable chair, I watch television and look at my picture frame. I see your pictures as they pass by, and it makes me so happy that I lived to be able to enjoy this invention in technology. Thanks so much for caring enough to make this time in my life such a happy one."

Customer Reviews

Fabulous
I just got one to give to my technophobe mom on Mother's Day. I am extremely impressed. It's attractive; it looks far more like a picture frame than an electronic device. The photo quality, while not quite as good as an average computer monitor, is quite respectable. It was extremely easy to set up and get working. And it works perfectly.

The frame cycles between 20 pictures that you've uploaded to the Ceiva web site, showing each for between 5 seconds and 2 hours (the time is up to you). It downloads new pictures from the web site automatically every night; you can also force it to download immediately. You can store up to 1000 (I think) pictures on the web site, and the frame will rotate them, choosing 20 different ones each day. You can also tell it to keep pictures until further notice, or have it choose one picture randomly each day from each of 20 albums that you establish online, or show "channels" like the local weather and prime-time TV schedule, or any combination of the above.

You can send photos in JPEG or several other formats. Ceiva's web site recommends editing photos to increase color saturation and contrast, and decrease brightness, in order to optimize their appearance on the frame (as opposed to on your monitor). I think their advice is correct, but I don't want to bother saving 2 versions of each photo, one for me and one for my mom's frame; the quality is still pretty good. Ceiva also recommends saving in 640x480 pixels, but I've found that larger pictures (both slightly larger and way larger) look just as good, so I don't bother saving a small version just for the frame. (I have a fast web connection, so I don't mind the time it takes to upload the image from my PC. I'm not sure whether this results in longer time for Ceiva to download photos to the frame, but I suspect that they convert them to 640x480 before downloading them.)

Now the drawbacks:

- It's expensive. ....

- The image quality could be better.

- Th image must be viewed pretty much straight on, not at much of an angle.

- The person with the frame can do very little. Basically all they can do (besides enjoy the show) is change the brightness and force an immediate download. Anything else, including telling it what hours to go dark at night, how long to show each picture, what pictures to change the next day, or your changed phone number, must be done on their web site. The assumption is that if the owner doesn't have a PC, he/she doesn't want to get involved with these things. That's probably the case most of the time, so I think this is a reasonable design, but there are probably some users who want to do more. Also, if there are connection problems, it can be cumbersome to troubleshoot and correct them with so little control from the frame.

- The web site user interface is confusing. It's actually pretty powerful once you figure it out, but it's way too hard to figure out.

- Of course, you need your photos in digital form to send them to Ceiva's web site. If you already do digital, this is no problem. If you will have to start doing this just so you can send them to Ceiva, that's additional time and expense that you need to factor in.

- The frame comes in your choice of colors, so long as your choice is black.

- Other users have complained of hardware problems. Most of those seem to show up right away, so you can reduce the problem by getting the unit in advance and trying it out before giving it as a gift. But the number of complaints I've seen seems rather high.

I expect that most or all of these problems will be fixed over time. The price will inevitably come down, and Ceiva's web site suggests that a new model this summer will accept pictures directly from memory cards rather than requiring a service subscription. (Some competitive products already do this.) Display technology, of course, keeps improving. Their web site promises an improved UI in a few weeks. And it implies that other colors will be available eventually. In a couple of years, I think this will be a much more appealing product, perhaps good enough that I'll want several around my house.

But if you have (say) a parent who craves pictures of their grandchildren, a couple of years of pleasure is worth a lot. That's why I sprung for one for my mom last week, and I liked it so much, I ordered a second for my wife's grandma yesterday. I just packed up my mom's after having it running in my office for a few days, and I miss it already!

Not something I want in my house!
I was initially very excited about the idea of a digital picture frame, but my expectations were not met when I got my frames. (Yes, I ordered two!) I was very surprise regarding the quality / appearance. The front of the frame has a large black mat that has the Ceiva name in large letters on it. (They could have been more subtle...) Also, the glass on the frame makes it very difficult to see the photos due to glare. The frame itself looks like a Walgreen's special. The back is made out of cheap black cardboard and the outer frame looks like it cost pennies to make. Unless you want something that has that bargain look, I say wait until there are more options on the market. When you pay this much money, you expect something that looks nice and is built to last. Also, I think just being able to download photos from their website is an inconvenience. I want to download pictures from my computer - or - better yet, from my compact flash card! Another annoyance - when you receive photos and your frame is full (the frame has a measely ten photo capacity) - the new photo writes over an existing photo! Nice, idea, but not there yet.

Experiences with Ceiva
I was really excited when I saw that this product was available. I ordered it, and received my Ceiva promptly. So far so good.

Hooked it up and that's where the problems started. Not only did my photos not appear (the ones I'd uploaded to the website, which seemed to work fine), but later in the evening a lady called me asking why I kept calling her. She sounded really stressed. Later she called me again and was on the point of calling the police when I realized that my brand new Ceiva was calling her. And she had caller ID.

Well, Ceiva technical support were very helpful and told me about an undocumented feature for resetting the dial-in number (I don't know WHY they didn't put that in the manual). And the poor lady didn't send the police, so, OK.

My previously uploaded features didn't appear however. Seems Ceiva had changed their software version and "forgotten" what I'd previously spent an hour setting up. I went through this again, so, finally, OK.

Now blame all the above on teething troubles. And granted, Ceiva technical support were courteous and helpful and finally sorted things out. However i have to be honest I find the basic product disappointing (I realize I seem to be in the minority of reviewers here).

Once I get over the "cool factor" and that Ceiva is one of the first companies out there, I find the picture quality poor. Other LCD products seem to be able to get a crisper, brighter picture. On Ceiva the colors just look drab. And not the same as on my PC.

I spent quite some time manually playing around with the color balance on my PC, uploading, downloading to get a good picture without complete success. It would have been nice if ceiva included some "auto-fix" tools to do this like some PC s/w packages have.

So am I glad I bought the product? Well it's certainly cool and new, though I think the category will not take off until some better products appear in the market.