I was scrolling through ThinkGeek‘s list of new additions (RSS feed actually) when something broke my concentration. Out of three new items added on October 19th, two didn’t make sense together:
The price of the digital picture frame with remote is $199.99USD. The DVD player costs $159.99USD. That’s a $40.00USD difference, which is almost 25%. How come a DVD player, which is richer in features costs so much less?
The digital frame only has a remote and a 5.6″ screen. It can show images from the digital cameras (JPEG that is) in a slideshow. And it can play an mp3 file while doing so. There is also support for MPEG-I and and MPEG-II files.
The DVD player also has a remote. But it has a 7″ screen and supports playback of DVDs, MP3s, and JPEGs. Both PAL and NTSC are supported. It comes with an impressive list of accessories that can make it useful both in the house and on the road (in the car). It has two pairs of headphones can be plugged in if built-in stereo speakers are inappropriate. There are both audio and video output sockets. Etc.
Now I wonder why would someone want to buy smaller, less functional and more expensive digital picture frame, when it is possible to spend less money on device with bigger screen and the same feature set?
quality of TFT? material of frame? or something like that.
Personally, I’ll prefer DVD Player, but somebody can reckon that the reliability of device without moving details much higher. :)
Either way it is a mini-computer. Probably both of them even run Linux or some other stipped down major operating system.
Quite possible, need to read tech descriptions by manufacturers, ThinkGeek doesn’t have much details.