Birthday albums, marriage albums and anniversary albums are part of every family?s own little folklore, with more and more of the stuff added every year, nay virtually every month. Then there are the vacation albums diligently recording every wet detail of the family frolicking on the sandy beaches of Goa. These albums are ritualistically placed on the coffee table whenever a visiting guest or relative succumbs to being a captive audience with the head of the family taking upon himself the responsibility of turning the leaves of the album and providing a running commentary on how and when the pictures were taken, while the hostess waits with a sherbet-laden tray, not only for the photo show to finish but also for the albums to be cleared from the table lest they get soiled by a spillover .

This is a scenario from the era of film cameras when physical prints of the rolls clicked were essential for people to see the enterprising work of the person behind the shutter. But digital cameras changed all that. If film cameras were the preserve of the die-hard ?classes?, digital cameras became the last refuge of the ?masses?. They did for the image-hungry proletariat what the Bolsheviks did for the deprived and depleted Russians back in the 19th century.

But with digital cameras and camera-enabled phones flooding every pocket, could digital photo frames be far behind? To display (read ?show off?’) one?s handiwork, another ?must have? nowadays is a digital photo frame. Transcend?s T.photo 710 is one such device that not only displays a Harry Pottersque slide show of your pictures but also provides background music.

Pioneer in flash memory products, Transcend has launched these digital photo frames in India recently. Finished in satin black plastic with gold trimmings, they have a non-reflective 7-inch, high resolution (480×234) TFT LCD display panel. Though very bright and sharp, its approximate aspect ratio of 1:2 may not suit all your pictures, unless off course, you make a conscious effort to click all your pictures in one position either vertical or horizontal (either portrait or landscape mode) and then place the T.photo710 accordingly to suit your pictures. I would have preferred an aspect ratio of 3:5 instead to display all the pictures taken in different modes without much cropping and the need to change the position of the photo frame.

All the controls and connectors are neatly concealed behind the broad plastic frame.

On the right side is the DC power connecter socket and there are flash memory card reader slots of different types (MS, SD, MMC and CF). You can display pictures straight from the flash memory card of the camera. On the right side are the volume control toggle, head phone jack, USB and USB host connector slots (The T.photo-710 can also work as a card reader if you attach it to your PC or laptop). The USB host connector allows you to plug-in USB flash drives. Once wired to the PC, the photo frame will automatically read and display all your pictures stored on the flash card. The topside has all the control buttons in case you misplace remote or it runs out of battery power. The back has two slots each (for vertical and horizontal settings) for the stand bracket and two eyelets to hang the photo frame on the wall if you want to. There are also two tiny stereo speakers nicely tucked away under the back panel. The audio reproduction is decent if not audiophile quality. I wish they had also incorporated an FM tuner.

It supports digital camera JPG, BMP and Motion-JPG formats for photographs and MP3, WMA, and WAV files for music.

The 219 mm x1565 mm big T.photo frame is only 28 mm deep and has 1 GB of internal memory and weighs 430 grams. The slim, full-function remote control allows you to select pictures, time the slide show and also control the volume of the background score.

T.photo frame can also be used as a table/bedside alarm clock with monthly calendar. In the clock/calendar mode it displays a photo on one half of the screen, while on the other half it shows a digital clock with monthly calendar.

The broad black frame surrounding the display screen is very ?plastic? and boring, and definitely no verity for long-term use. Designers at Transcend could have done with a little bit of imagination and provided some interchangeable panels (like Nokia phones) with some classic, some ornamental and some modern design variants to kill the monotony.

With a street price of around Rs 6,150, it has a great display artifact value and makes for an appreciable gift item.