Home > Consumer Reviews > Kodak Easyshare SV-1011 10-inch Digital Picture Frame

I love this unit. Picture quality is excellent and the speakers serve the function of background music quite well. I use a CF card for the pix and an SD card for the music. Nice it can take both at the same time. Only drawback was the cheap looking suppled frame, but I bought the glass frame accesory from Kodak and it looks fantastic and feels much more substantial. I especially like the remote. I had a Philips frame, which was nice, but no remote and it was difficult to work the buttons.

No need to install the software, just insert a card and go!

Purchased the Kodak Easy Share SV 1011 for my 75-year old parents, so they could enjoy the digital pictures that my web-savvy siblings and I share on the web. I purchased it a week before their anniversary so that I could figure it out and tutor them on it. I wish I could say the software was easy to use, but I found it to be a confusing interface.

The frame is sharp looking, however, the type of controls I expected were missing.

First off, being a video editor, I was enamored of the idea of loading short avi or mpeg videos onto the frame's hard drive, to add some interest to a slide show. No go. Due to some proprietary bullpucky, I discovered it won't play movie files copied off of a computer. Only videos loaded directly off of a camera, making the function useless for those of us who edit our videos on our computer.

Also, I've heard mixed ratings on the pixel quality, and perhaps I'm expecting too much for over $200, but I was not impressed.

In short, don't let the bells and whistles make you spend the extra dough. I am betting a less expensive model will do what you want without paying for benefits that aren't what you might expect.

I researched a lot before this purchase and settled on the Kodak SV-1011, which also essentially comes in 7, 8 inch versions and 8, 10 inch wireless versions. I purchased the SV-1011 for 173.00 from an online vendor and here are my comments:

1) An excellent frame overall but forget the button menus -- remote control is easier to use. The interface itself is not that intuitive (a little klunky or awkward) but not awful (just could be a little better). There is a lot of "back" button usage.
2) I loaded 70 pictures and it worked instantly. However, 20 of the files displayed a "Current File is Bad" Error. Online Chat with Kodak was useless but I did get a reply in about 30 hours from an email with a good response. Before that, however, I fixed it myself. Here's the deal: the frame only handles "baseline" JPEG, not PROGRESSIVE SCAN. My files were a combination of digital camera pics and scans, many of which were modified in Adobe Photoshop Elements. You need to save the file as "Baseline JPEG" not "Progressive" (it's a menu that pops up when it asks what quality of file). I've heard elsewhere that you need to do 1200x600 dpi files but I suspect that author actually was saving it as baseline when changing the dpi and thinking that was the problem. In reality, I have larger files but the problem was confirmed by Kodak in a very detailed email. EVERYTHING WORKS GREAT and the casual user should never run into this, only if you scan or modify using a photo program.
3) Lousy documentation -- comes with Easyshare CD but don't even bother using this. The available USB cable in the package connects directly to the frame from the PC or transfer using the media card. No need to even load easyshare (I thought documentation was on the CD). The online documentation available at kodak.com is slightly better.

All in all, I'm very satisfied with this product and marked it lower than a 5 because of the issues listed above.

The Kodak Easyshare SV-1011 is easy to use. There are two issues - the colors are somewhat oversaturated. The second is that the size ratio (length to width) is not the same as the images I have loaded. Therefore the sides of the screen are not used at all.

Things I wish I knew before I bought this frame. This is the first digital frame I have purchased, so some of these comments may apply to other digital frames besides this Kodak model.

1. The picture is displayed on an LCD type screen. This means that if you are not looking at it from just the right angle you either can't see it very well or the colors don't look right.

2. Hanging the frame on a wall rather than displaying it on a table or desk minimizes the viewing angle problem, but then you have a thick black power cord hanging down the wall (you can't run the frame off of a battery).

3. The exterior of the frame is a matte black, which looks nice. There is also a shiny black plastic rectangle surrounding the picture (kind of similar to a mat on a regular type picture frame). If you put this frame in a room with a lot of lights (like an office with florecent lighting) this reflects a lot and the glare distracts from the picture.

4. I paid $200 for this frame - which seems like a lot of money given that it just basically plays a slide show. I know it has some other features like being able to print - but why would anyone use a frame to produce prints?? You can probably buy a refurbished computer for $200.

Glare an angle problems aside, the picture quality on the Kodak frame is good, however I do think $200 is way too much to pay for this frame. If the cost dropped significantly I might consider buying it again - but not at the current price.