Product Description

The Mustek PF-A700B 7-inch digital photo frame displays hundreds of JPEG photos stored on SD, MMC, Memory Stick and other popular memory card formats -- all with out a PC, a printer or Internet access. Not only do the frames allow digital photographers to proudly showcase their photos, but when photo mode is not in use, you have the ability to use the frame as a desktop/tabletop MP3 player and listen to your tunes no matter where you are. Operation could not be simpler. The great thing about the PFA700B digital picture frames is that we have eliminated selecting that one perfect picture for a office desk or living room. Now you can interchange an entire library of images, for a full multimedia experience.

Product Details

• Brand: Mustek
• Model: PF-A700B
• Platform: Not Machine Specific
• Format: CD
• Dimensions: 4.90" h x 7.30" w x 1.50" l, 1.30 pounds

Features

• 7-inch color TFT LCD digital photo viewer
• Multi-function device displays photos, plays music files, and features USB connectivity
• Compatible w/SD, MMC, Memory Stick, and CF memory cards
• Supports Up to 12 MP image files (JPEG file format)
• Easy operation

Customer Reviews

The Frame Is Fine, The Users Unrealistic Expectations Are The Problem
I bought this as a Black Friday special to give as a Christmas present. So far, FOR THE PRICE, I am pretty happy with the frame. I also picked up a SanDisk 1GB sd card to use in the frame to store images on. Here's my thoughts so far:
1) The frame is pretty intuitive to operate, I was able to get it up and running without reading the directions.
2) I suppose having a usb drive sticking out of the frame would be noticeable but the sd card and compact flash cards are not noticeable when inserted, so go drop $15 on an SD card and be done with it. As for the item not having any internal memory, that was a trade-off that Mustek made to achieve a lower price-point. Personally, I like the flexibility of just being able to pop the SD card out and throw it in my computer's card reader.
3) Yes the native resolution appears to be 480x342. If you have tons of photos to resize Microsoft has an "image resizer" powertoy that will let you resize them all at once for free at [...] To keep the correct aspect ratio, resize the pictures to 456x342 or 480x360 and then crop out 18 pixels on the top or bottom. The reason for the resizing of the pictures is twofold: a) you fit more pictures on a card this way and b) smaller pictures have no delay in load time (i.e., you don't have to wait for pictures to load, after picture A has been displayed for 5 seconds (or whatever interval you choose) picture B loads right away, whereas large pictures take additional time to load because the frame's cpu has to resize the picture itself).
4) No the frame is not as high a resolution as you would get with a laptop display, but for 1/4 the price of a laptop, an expectation that the picture would be that sharp is unrealistic.
5) Of course this item is going to have a power cord, display panels are energy hogs and having a li-ion or nimh battery for this frame that would probably only last a few hours and wear out eventually anyways would put the frame's price-point well over $100.

I'll just close by saying I am happy with this item, and I think the recipient of this gift will be happy with it as well. It irritates me that this item is getting a bad rap not because the item is bad but more because the people who purchased the item did so with unrealistic expectations.

Good Value
Many reviewers have faulted this product for the quality of its display. Granted, the display is not the sharpest in the world but for the money what do you expect? This is not a computer display monitor on which you will be performing Photoshop edits -- it's a digital picture frame for snapshots! It is certainly not as sharp as my SXGA monitor, but I didn't expect it to be. When using this display, you have to start with a reasonably good image; it should be sharp and well exposed. You should also resize the image to approximately 480 x 330 pixels -- that's not critical, but larger images will take longer to load. The picture frame provides a number of options for viewing the images, including simply running through them continuously in slide show mode, which presumably will be the most popular (it's the default option). There are a considerable number of options that are selectable via menus and they range from display intervals, changing the sort order, varying the contrast and brightness, selecting the transition effect, etc. You can connect it to a TV with optional cables and it will even play MP3 files. I didn't buy this to critically evaluate my photographs -- I bought it for a relative so they could have an ever changing display of family pictures. For the price Amazon is asking, I think it's a great value.

Good deal for the price
This frame is well priced and does a good job displaying pictures if you take the time to prepare them. I bought this as a present for my friend and wanted to load some pictures on it first. It took me a while to figure out what the other reviewers were talking about when they described how they resized and cropped the pictures. I figured it out finally using Photoshop Elements 4.0. Other products will perform similarly, the basics are the same.

The default setting the frames comes set at is 4:3 ratio, so change that first in the settings to 16:9.

Then in Photoshop Elements, take the original set of photos and squeeze them using File>Process Multiple Files. In the Resize Images section, set the Width to 77% and the Height to 100% and uncheck Constrain Proportions. This will make all of your pictures look squeezed from the sides and unnatural, but that's what you need because the frame will stretch the sides back out when it displays the picture.

Now you need to crop them one by one to both cut out wasted space and set it up to use the whole frame heighth and width. In Photoshop Elements Editor, open the whole folder of your squeezed pictures and select the first picture to crop. Select the Crop Tool and in the Aspect Ratio box above your first squeezed image, choose Custom. Set the Width to 48 inches and Height to 34.2 inches (it won't let you choose 480 by 342--too high) and leave the Resolution box empty. Don't worry about those numbers, those inches are meaningless, it's the ratio of the box you want to crop with. Now you should have a nice rectangular box to crop each picuture with in the correct ratio and save the new cropped picture.

Transfer the pictures to the frame (I used an SD card) and they'll display perfectly with no distortion. Many thanks to whoever figured that out first. The frame is great when you display the pictures using the whole area.