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It’s been a while since a DPF came across my lab table. The Vu DP1046 represents another of the company’s attempts at a visual product other than a television, although the deviation isn’t too far down the line. Form Factor At a glance the 1046 is actually a very neat looking DPF. It sports a black glossy frame that can easily be construed to be a finger magnet, not that you’d ever need to actually use your fingers for any function though, thanks to the full function remote. The 10.4-inch 4:3 ratio TFT LCD has a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels and a contrast ratio of 300:1. A set of controls can be found at the rear of the device above the stereo speakers. Like almost all other DPFs, behind the display, on one side is a standard USB port for pen drives, a mini USB (2.0) connector port PC connectivity to access either cards or the 256MB of internal space, a 3.5mm earphone socket followed by an AV out option, power switch and the DC adapter port. The card slots are on the other side. It has support for - SD, MS, MMC, CF and XD cards. Although I have to say that it’s a neat looking frame the build quality is shoddy and rather slipshod. When we first opened the box, a screw fell out and the device started falling apart. I‘m sincerely hoping that ones you buy from a proper store would be in a better condition. Features and Performance Interface With such a large display, I expected a slightly higher pixel resolution but it was nevertheless quite clear. The UI is easy to navigate with very clear indicators for all the functions and options. The remote was quite erratic though even with a new battery and on the whole the UI was quite slow. When accessing memory cards or USBs, it was even slower depending on the capacity of the external source and how much data was present on it. For some reason the test piece I received refused to connect to the PC as a USB device unless there was a card present in the drive. Even then I was unable to copy paste anything onto the on board memory as an error kept popping up. Audio I have one statement when it comes to decibel level – HOLY COW it’s loud! I almost tore my eardrums when I inserted my earphones for testing. The volume, although very scratchy could only be increased to just one bar. That was louder than most mobile handsets I review. There’s no way you’d be able to increase it any further without going stone deaf. The speakers are loud enough to sit back quite far and listen to audio but the higher the volume the louder the background hiss. Video Videos look really good on the 1046 DPF. It reads most of the common formats as it comes with codecs for DivX. Formats include MPEG1, MPEG2, MP4 and AVI. The problem is that the audio syncing was a bit off with most files and most files that mobile handsets with DivX support played, the 1046 couldn’t locate. So just copy pasting will not work as some of my test files in MPEG4 format and lower didn't read. Videos can be re-sized to fit the screen with a zoom option. An EP (3.5mm) to RCA video cable has been included with the package in case you decide to hook up the device to a TV set via the AV out option for larger viewing. The media players had very simplistic interfaces with very basic options like skipping, forwarding and rewinding and getting information on the devices. A separate option for OSD (On Screen Display) is present so you can simply hide the options if you choose to. What’s a little annoying is that the device won’t register any file that it can’t read so you may just wonder where your files have gotten to. They’re all there but if they are not supported they just wont show up. Images The DPF comes with a dedicated hardware JPEG decoder that enables even extra large images to load quickly (8000x8000 mega pixel image files). Like all others a slide show feature exists with multiple transition effects and adjustable display time. There’s also a zoom feature available for images. A Combo feature allows you to play music stored on a drive to play in the background with a slide show running. Misc. Features Along with having a time option and Calendar, the DP1046 also has an alarm clock. The brochure says you can use a music file as a ringer but there didn’t seem to be any option for the same. In the settings menu, under the Default settings, there’s an option for USB and Bluetooth, neither of which are accessible via the remote or the device itself. It uses a DC adapter for power but thankfully it’s not one of those uber heavy ones but a pretty standard 12 volts model. There’s no support battery, which is always a bad thing for devices like these as that restricts their placement in a home. The DPF has to be placed only where there’s a wall socket easily available. The Bottom Line The Vu SK-DP1046 DPF comes with a price tag of Rs. 7,990. Although I think the display is quite good with support for DivX video playback and an obscenely loud audio engine, the build quality is quite poor and the functionality also seemed to have quite a few hang ups especially since I was unable to even use a single KB of the 256MB of internal space. So if you’re looking for a DPF for your home, there are others out there that are better options. |
Tags: Digital Photo Frame
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