Home > Consumer Reviews > Coby DP-888 8-Inch Digital Photo Frame with MP3 Player & 2 Wood Frames

I spent a while trying to figure out how to use this thing. A lot of people say that it is a 16:9 ratio, but I didn't realize what that meant, or that I would need to distort my images to make them look correct on the picture frame. Here is what I did to get the pictures over and working properly. First, push the setup button on the frame or remote, then change under the photo tab to "original" view mode. Now, when you prepare your photos to put them on the frame, crop them to be 960 x 468. Then scale the image to be 720 x 468. It will look like you have distorted the image and made everything "skinny." You did, but when you put it on the picture frame, it will look correct. When you load the images on the frame, click the 16:9 ratio button on the remote. If you click it to be 4:3, it will look as it did on your computer after you distorted it, but the 16:9 button will make it look like the original. Once I figured this all out I was good to go, but until then I felt like throwing it at the wall. I don't know if this will work for everyone, but I hope it helps. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure this out.

I purchased this device the first time and when it was delivered it would freeze up, not charge at all, or just plain not work. I called Coby first and the gentleman was very rude and not helpful. I filed for return paperwork with Amazon, they were WONDERFUL and sent me out a new one two day air as I sent the defective one back. I received the second one and low and behold the same thing! Do not buy this product. We had purchased this product to take on vacation with us so that I could show off my kids to friends I haven't seen in 15 years. No luck, now I will travel empty handed.

Looking at the other reviews on here, I almost feel like there are shills on here because nobody could possibly be giving this product a good review.

It's pretty fussy with memory. I first tried a 2GB SanDisk Ultra II CompactFlash card. It just said "Bad Card" with no explanation. I tried both FAT and FAT32. Then I tried a 1GB SanDisk Ultra II SD card. "Bad Card". I then tried a Kingston 2GB SD card, which worked. No idea what the problem was, maybe they don't like SanDisk?

It's supposedly a wide-screen frame but it only actually displays 4:3 correctly. If you feed it a wide-screen image, it'll inexplicably compress it to be tiny, in 4:3 with black bars on all four sides (even on original picture mode). If you switch it to 16:9 mode, it'll bizarrely leave the black bars on the top and bottom, and only stretch out the sides, leaving the image distorted and everyone fat looking. Definitely bugs.

The image quality is abysmal. Of course, this is to be expected, as the resolution is the pits, at 480x234. Even worse, since this is basically only usable at 4:3, the usable resolution is only 312*234. Note that this is worse screen quality than my cell phone, which is 320*240. My cell phone's screen is also only about the size of a matchbook, whereas this thing is 7 inches, making obvious pixels and an awful image.

Lastly, the UI is truly a piece of work. A piece of terrible work. Why in the world doesn't it start displaying the slideshow automatically? Instead, you have to navigate through a series of unintuitive menus in order to do just about anything.

This is one of the worst consumer products I have ever seen.

Can anyone recommend a basic digital frame that has internal memory that does not need any extra accessories or memory cards and is somewhat easy to use? Because I'm just really incredibly frustrated and fed up with this thing. I gave this to my dad a few months ago for his birthday. Ever since he started using his digital camera he has amassed quite a collection of photos but has no where to put them. He still has not figured out how to use this frame. So the other day I offered to load the photos for him. What a nightmare.

The user's manual is a total joke, it was riddled with misprints and none of it helped me. This thing is driving me crazy.

According to the manual the frame supports these types of memory files:
Compact Flash Cards
Secure Digital Cards
Multimedia Cards
xD Picture Cards
Memory Sticks

And, I have these types of memory:
Fujifilm 16MB memory card xD-Picture Card
Swissbit 64MB usb stick

When I insert each of these pieces of memory the frame says: not supported file.

Why does it say that? Am I putting it in wrong? Or what? Both my xD Card & my Memory Stick cannot be incompatible with this frame, can it?

The "trouble shooting" inside the manual was garbage. It doesn't mention what "not supported file" means or what to do. And it doesn't talk in basic language for everyday customers to understand.

I called their tech support hotline: 800-681-2629 and it was a huge waste of time. The person I spoke to sounded totally stoned it wasn't even a technical support department, it was an order taker that I spoke to. I wasted 2 hours on this plastic piece of garbage.

I finally got it to work with a SanDisk brand SD memory card .

Once the card was inserted, it took about 20 seconds for it to be read then once I entered on the image it took another few seconds to come up (for the first few seconds all I saw was a black screen.) When I set it to the photo gallery mode it was rather slow, I had it on the fastest setting (6 seconds,) but it seemed like it didn't want to move that quick. Anyway, the picture quality is pretty bad and the pictures all look much much darker.

Suffice it to say, I would not recommend this to anyone because it is not user-friendly, the picture quality is abysmal and Coby's tech support is beyond abominable.

The Pros: Visually the frame is nice when you first look at it. It does support a number of media types and file formats as documented above. The Cons: Not playing Audio and Video at the same time? Are you kidding? Why would you want to listen to an MP3 on these cheesy little speakers unless it was to compliment a slide show? The menu navigation is too difficult. It isn't very user friendly. It is 16:9, unless you want to edit EVERY photo (or shoot in this format), your photos will either be streched or you can view them in 4:3. If you view them in 4:3, you might as well go for a 5.6" frame.
Speaking of the 5.6" - take a look at the Portable USA 5.6-Inch Digital Picture Frame on Amazon. It has all the Pros and NONE of the cons. The only problem I have with it is that I can't find the volume control for the MUSIC DURING SLIDESHOWS. It plays a few less formats, but does it very well. Navigation is simple!