A New Digital Photo Frame that Shows Videos

I absolutely love the fact that my children were born after digital cameras were invented.  And in addition, having a digital camera on my phone has been a tremendous convenience.  I am ready to snap photos at a second’s notice!

A quick scan of my PC shows me that I have over 250k pictures (not including videos), weighing in at over 1TB of space!  That’s a lot of pictures!  Although I have been diligent about taking pictures, I haven’t been as good about enjoying them.

Google Photos has helped me with this.  I backed up most of my photos there and with Google’s identification software, I have been able to create slideshows of each of my children growing up, past Christmases, my parents’ lives, and family vacations.

Although it’s been fun looking at our pictures on my phone, a digital photo frame is a much better way to view our photos.  Several years ago we tested out the Nixplay 8-inch Iris digital photo frame, it worked great.

The new Nixplay Seed Wave 13 inch Widescreen intrigued me because it includes two 5-watt speakers behind it as well as the ability to play the first 15 seconds of any videos you send to the frame.  Wow, now that’s cool.

It reminds me of the moving pictures on Harry Potter but longer; it’s super fun and totally catches people by surprise when they see a video on your digital photo frame!

Displaying Pictures on Nixplay

Getting pictures to display on your Nixplay frame is pretty easy.  First, connect the accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox, Google Photos, etc.) you want to use to your Nixplay digital photo frame.  Then create albums from selecting pictures from these accounts as well as pics from your phone.

Albums can be called “Grand Canyon Vacation” pictures of Johnny,” “Easter dinner,” etc.  Albums are copied to the Nixplay cloud for easy use and redistribution.

Then you can create a slideshow by selecting pictures from your various albums or by choosing all the pictures in an album. 

Here are some of the albums I created:

• Growing Up (of my kids)
• New Year’s Eve
• Christmas Past (Christmas of the kids growing up)
• Odyssey of the Mind 2019
• Family Heritage (old photos of our parents)
• Sacramento RV Trip
• Latest Pics
• Remembering Dad

I love showing pictures from the latest vacation we’ve been on, they bring back instant memories as if it were just yesterday!  The next album I’m going to create is all the pictures of our two dogs.  Google photos make this easy to find them.  We love our pups!

In displaying your pictures, there are a number of choices under settings to transition and enhance your photos.

Here are your choices, as per the Nixplay blog:

Under ‘Settings’ and ‘Transition’, you can:

• Fit to Screen which ensures that your full photo or video will fit inside the screen, irrespective of the orientation of the frame. Vertical or horizontal sidebars are likely to appear. However, within this transition setting, you can also opt to view black horizontal or vertical sidebars or blurred horizontal or vertical sidebars.
• Fill Screen which will fill the entire screen with your photo or video, with no sidebars – but cropping may occur.
• Pan and Zoom which moves the photo very slowly across the screen, revealing sections at a time.
• Tiles will automatically add a tile or collage effect to your photos
• Snapshot will automatically add a snapshot effect to your photos, adding a white border and digitally ‘stacking’ your photos on top of one another.

Features:

• Beautiful high definition 13″ screen
• Includes two 5-watt Bluetooth speakers with dedicated bass and amplifier to play sound from 15-second videos as well as tunes from your phone
• Can actually display 15 seconds of your video
• Connects to Google Photos to display your pictures from today or yesteryear
• Connects to Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, Flickr, and Alexa (for voice command) to display photos
• Includes 10 GB of free secure online cloud storage as well as 8GB internal memory
• Instantly share photos to your frame or anyone else’s (who has given you access), straight from your phone app
• The app easily pairs with your Nixplay frame once it is set up on your WiFi network
• Create different playlists like “Cruise Vacation, “Christmases Past”, “Benjamin”, “Remembering Grandpa,” and more.  Choose which slideshows you want to be displayed
• Use the app or included small remote to change settings, move back or forward on pictures, and change display options

Pros:

• It’s very easy to get pictures from your phone and other sources (Google Photos, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) onto your frame
• Anyone can email pictures to the frame using a convenient personalized email address
• Love the fact the frame doubles as a Bluetooth speaker
• Great flexibility on what slideshows play on one or all of your Nixplay frames
• Pictures almost instantaneously show up on the photo frame once you send them from the app
• The app is handy and acts as a remote control as well
• You can send photos directly to Gramma’s Nixplay frame to keep her updated on the kids
• There’s a built-in “Latest Pics” Slideshow that shows the last 100 photos from your phone camera
• Pictures readjust to show at the right orientation even if they were sideways when uploaded
• Nixplay uses a sensor to turn once motion is detected
• You have the ability to turn off the frame during certain hours (like 11pm-7am)

Cons:

• The screen is not a touch screen, so you can’t swipe pictures forward or backward
• The videos are fun but 15 seconds isn’t long enough
• Is a little pricey but Nixplay digital photo frames last for years

The Nixplay SeedWave 13″ digital photo frame sells for $248.44 with free shipping from eBay.

A Mom’s Perspective

If you don’t have a digital photo frame yet, it’s time to get one.  Digital photo frames have so many better features than the first ones that hit the market over 10 years ago. 

I remember when my Mom and Mom-in-Law first received their digital photo frames.  They unplugged them.  Why?  They hated the fact that they were wasting energy.

Today’s frames are LED, so they use less energy.  They also turn off when they do not detect motion.  And the fact that you can automatically update the Nixplay digital photo frames from a number of different sources effortlessly is so handy.

In the old days, you’d have to update a digital photo frame with an SD card.  Now you take care of everything from the app.  It is so easy to send pictures to grandparents using the app, no matter how far away they live.

As an avid digital photo taker, I have literally thousands of photos and videos tucked away on my computer.  I thoroughly enjoy reliving the memories with my family when they pop up on my Nixplay digital photo frame.

*I was given a Nixplay Seed Wave digital photo frame in exchange for my opinion.  All expressed thoughts are my own.