As much as digital photo frames confuse and astound me, I can’t really say I don’t get it. They are after all, photos you (presumably) want to have displayed so as to look at them anytime. Plus they light up, and that’s always cool.
Sony today unveiled their VAIO CP1 Wi-Fi photo frame, with more than 16 million colors and 800×480 resolution on a 7-inch LCD screen. Utilizing built-in Wi-Fi technology, the CP1 model lets you stream photos from a VAIO PC directly to the device. It also communicates with Google’s Picasa web albums.
It comes with 128MB internal storage and accepts Memory Stick media, SD cards and is CompactFlash media card-compatible.
Rounding out its connectivity features, the CP1 also has an RSS reader built-in allowing for it to grab content from the Internet and display it along with your slideshows. Included is an Internet radio player and built in speakers.
For all this, you’d practically be getting a netbook, and for the $300 asking price you wouldn’t be far off. Still, a dedicated device for picture viewing is nice. Hey, it does also tell time, though.
The VAIO CP1 digital photo frames will be available starting in mid-October. Entire press release, here.
Although this looks like a nice device it is too expensive for a photo frame. They should just have stuck with the enhnaced photo quality, card reader and wifi connectivity and skipped the rest! I think these devices have to be under $150 to be marketable.