Home > Consumer Reviews > Polaroid Digital Photo Frame

I just purchased a Polaroid digital picture frame and even though appears to be well made I am sending it back. I have 2 major problems with this product. First, there is no way to directly connect it to a PC to download pictures without going through the Cevia web site. You must upload your pictures to the web then download them to the picture frame. This means that once your free 3 month trial is up you must pay a monthly fee to Cevia for as long as you want to be able to change pictures in the frame.

My second and even bigger problem with the frame is the terms that you automatically agree to by uploading a picture to the Cevia website. The following is a direct quote from the agreement you are accepting by uploading a picture to the Cevia website...

"Ownership and Rights to Use Content. You will retain ownership of any copyright or license in your submitted content and images, however, you agree to the following: By submitting images or content to this Site, you grant to Polaroid Corporation, its successors, assigns, licensees, and agents, a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, and royalty-free right and license to use, reproduce, display, distribute, modify, adapt, publish, perform, transmit, and prepare derivative works from all images and content on this web site. You represent and warrant that you have full right and authority to grant these rights and no one else's permission is required."

I bought this digital picture frame for my parents (who live 2 hours away) so I could send them digital pictures of my 2 year old and 4 year old daughters. According to the terms of this agreement, Polaroid can legally do ANYTHING they want to with the pictures of my children including turning them into royalty free photo collections on CD or selling them to ad agencies, magazines or anyone else. No Thanks. The pictures of my children are private and I will only share them with the people that I choose to share them with. I will not give Polaroid or Cevia or anyone else unlimited rights to do whatever they want with these pictures.

ok, so let me get this straight... the Cevia web site is a critical component of this frame functioning, even after paying $$$ for it? Without a guarantee that the Cevia site will be alive in 12 months? And every picture I send, Polaroid gets world-wide rights to without asking my permission?

Tell ya what.. you pay me $5K for the frame and ($price)for each picture, and the requirement that you ask me prior to use of an image and I'll *reconsider* this product. The marketing bozo who whipped this one up should practice this phrase.. "would you like paper or plastic?".

Boooo ... they just did away with the lifetime subscription plan. And I was just about to buy one, too. No way the subscription is worth [price] a year ... it should be free, especially if all you want is the ability to upload to your frame. I don't need their weather and news.

First let me say that I have not seen this product, but my information is based on web research. This product comes out of a joint venture between Polaroid and Ceiva. Therefore, like with the Ceiva frame, you have to be in the US, and you have to sign up with the Ceiva service, and their monthly fee, and their system.

Unlike the Kodak frame, which also requires you to sign up for internet service, this frame does not have a removable media slot, so you can only transfer stuff via the Web, as far as I can see. This system seems to work if you are prepared to lock yourself into their system, like, if you want to give your parents a way to see new pictures of your children, without their having to deal with a computer. I think that this is the only solution for which this is ideal.

Otherwise, if you want to display your own digital pictures, then to do it the Polaroid/Ceiva way, you have to sign up with their service, and do it via the internet. To do it the Kodak way, you still have to subscribe to their service, but you can use compact flash cards.

Or you can go for the Kensington device, which lets you transfer with USB, or pay out quite a bit more for the Sony device, which uses memory sticks. Right now, I am going to stick with displaying pictures on my iPaq, which is sub-optimal, but the most cost-effective solution for me.

[Pay money] to be able to send new photos to the frame? Pay Polaroid to assume my rights to the content of my photo album? Please!