best digital "video" frame

April 4, 2007 6:28 AM

I'm looking to acquire a digital picture frame that is going to be used to play videos. What is the "best" one? (Best = cheapest, easiest to use, most minimal, etc.)

This is going to be used as "art" and the only thing I care about is video playback.

The Coby DP-772 looks like it'd work, but it says that it "Plays Most MP4 and AVI Video Files from Digital Cameras." The video will be edited on my computer and then made into an MP4 or AVI file. Will it work? It's not "from my digital camera." Any experience with this one or any others?

posted by deep_sea_diving_suit to media & arts (3 comments total)

Judging by the product description, that Coby player would probably handle a short, low-quality video from a digital camera, but my hunch is that it would most likely choke on anything any beefier than that. (If it could handle it, they'd pitch the product as a portable media player and not a digital picture frame.) So I suppose the answer would depend on the length and quality of the video you plan to display.

You could always consider a DIY Solution or try to wall mount one of those portable media players.
posted by Otis at 8:46 AM on April 4, 2007

AVI video from digital cameras is usually compressed using the MJPEG codec, and that's often the only type that's supported.
posted by smackfu at 9:11 AM on April 4, 2007

@smackfu - The Coby says is plays MP4 files, though, and althought it might be technically possible to put MJPEG video into an MP4 container, I don't think that's what they're talking about. I suspect that it's capable of playing MPEG-4 ISMA Profile 0 (the most basic 'flavor' of MPEG-4), probably at 320x240 or some other fairly low resolution.

As long as you convert your video on your PC into the appropriate type of MP4 as a final step before sending it to the frame, the frame shouldn't be able to tell whether it's coming from a camera or your computer.

It's pretty trivial to Export a DV (or some other kind of video) clip to low bitrate MPEG-4. I'd do it in Quicktime Player Pro, but there are probably other ways.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:37 PM on April 4, 2007