The SanDisk Digital Photo Viewer (DPV) provides a simple, fast and convenient way to view photos taken with a digital camera on a television screen. Digital photographers can now instantly view and share their digital images with family and friends. The SanDisk DPV allows consumers to remove the storage card directly from their digital camera, plug it into the photo viewer and instantly view images on their TV. It has media slots that accept all the popular digital camera storage cards including CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMediaCard, SD and MemoryStick. The unit is slightly smaller than a VHS cassette and easily attaches to most TV sets or projectors. It includes a remote control to view multiple pictures in preview mode, delete, rotate and zoom. It also provides the setup for a customized slideshow of digital images stored on the card. The viewer supports JPEG files, which are the most common form of file format used by digital cameras, at resolutions up to 6 megapixels. For easy use, the viewer can display multiple languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese and Japanese) and can switch between NTSC and PAL formats. It includes a two-year warranty.
SanDisk's Photo Album (SPA) is a compact, sleek and easy-to-use device that enables you to display digital still pictures or video clips on your TV. Instead of crowding around your PC monitor, show off your latest digital images to friends and families using any TV set with an audio-video input. It's compatible with eight flash memory card formats as well as portable USB flash drives. You can use the SPA to play MP3 music files on your home audio system as well as add soundtracks to photo slide shows viewed on your TV.
The SPA supports eight flash memory card formats in four slots--CompactFlash Type I/II, Secure Digital (SD)/MultiMediaCard (MMC), Memory Stick/Memory Stick PRO, and SmartMedia/xD. The rear of the SPA has two USB ports--one that can connect to a PC (enabling you to use the SPA as an 8-in-1 card reader/writer) and another that can host a portable USB flash drive such as a SanDisk Cruzer Mini, Cruzer Micro, or Cruzer Titanium. There is also a slot for a second CompactFlash Card can be used as "archiving memory" for storing extended slide shows from images that are displayed from flash cards on the front side or from the USB flash drive, as well as store and replay video clips and MP3 music selections.
In addition to standard JPEG still images and MP3 files, the media player supports Motion JPEG and MPEG-1 for video. Playing MP3 tracks through television speakers or through a separate audio system is easy. Just load the SanDisk Photo Album with a flash card or USB flash drive that contains MP3 files and it will play them just like CDs on a CD player.
1 What they don't tell you in the instructions
I recieved the unit and hooked it up to a 27" TV. I then plugged in the compact flash card and turned the unit on. This habit came from experience with card readers and operating systems before WinXP that used to threaten you with all kind of awful things when you inserted or pulled a card out without doing it "properly". Having a card in a reader and turning the power on had always worked for me in the past.
The unit came up and displayed the SanDisk logo like it says in the instructions. However, the unit seemed to be locked up. I fiddled with it, checked cables, connections etc. Turned it off and on several times. Finally, I got frustrated and commented to my wife about how the unit wasn't working. The comments included several colorful adjectives that will not be used in this review. I then pulled the card out of the slot with the power still on and the unit displayed "insert a card".
I did what it said. The little green light blinked. It read the info on the card and started working as advertised.
If you read the instructions closely. Do exactly what it says in step six of the installation instructions. Then as it says - "you will see a message to insert a memory card".
Bottom line is, if you forget to take the memory card out when you turn the unit off, it will not work correctly when you power it back up with a card installed in a slot.
After I got past the power it up without a card in a slot exercise, the unit displayed JPG photos fine. It also played the sample MPG video of the gondola ride that you get with WinXP. It was a little jerky. Don't really know how it would work with digital video out of a video camera. The specs say MPEG-1 up to 8FPS.
There seems to be a slight delay after you push a remote key before the unit responds. The unit reacts more like a VCR than a computer to a remote keypress. Once I realized this, I slowed down my double click instinct. All of the functions worked fine as long as you push the button and wait for the unit to respond.
Pictures that are taken with the camera turned sideways (taller than wide) display smaller than pictures that are taken in normal orientation (wider than tall) The rotate and zoom functions will let you rotate, move around, and "blow up" the taller than wide view. The rotate picture funtion works OK but is a bit clumsy to use during a slide show.
The unit will display only JPG format pictures up to 16MEGS in size. The pictures I displayed were about 2.3MEG JPGs (file size). The picture size was about 18MEGS. The unit showed a crisper picture when the settings were changed to display "original resolution".
I bought the unit to show pictures directly on a large TV screen without any other hardware. If you don't have a TV with three input plugs (two for sound, one for video), you need to purchase a "modulator" to convert to coax cable output for older TVs.
All in all, I like the unit. It is cheaper than buying one of the "digital frames" even when you add the "modulator".
I plan on using the unit to display images on a TV for a relative in a nursing home. Using the compact stoarge media available today, it is possible to transport, store, and view of a lot more photos than you can carry in a suticase full of 3X5 photo prints. The pictures are bigger (better viewing for 80+ year old eyes) and everyone can look and comment on the pictures as you all view them together.
In my opinion, the only thing keeping the SanDisk Photo Album from a five star rating is the lack of a "modulator" built in to allow older TVs to connect without another "gizmo" that adds tranformers, cables, plugs, & clutter to the unit setup.
2 It's okay when it works
I wound up returning this item very shortly after purchasing it. It worked fine with a USB flash drive, but it wouldn't read the Compact Flash card from our Nikon CoolPix camera. Actually, sometimes it would start to read the CF card, but then the SanDisk Photo Album would completely lock up and not respond to any of the remote buttons. It may just be some incompatibility with the way the Nikon writes to the card, I really don't know. For my part, I'm going to seek out a similar device from another manufacturer and see if that works better. But the SanDisk will probably work just fine for others.
