Apparently the pictures are resized before sending and the size is pretty small, typically around 480×360 pixels. This is much smaller than the size of your Pix-Star’s screen (800×600 pixels) so when the picture arrives on your frame it looks too small…

There is absolutly nothing we can do about this unfortunatly… So you may avoid using this feature and instead directly link your Picasa web album to your pix-star then pictures will be in full resolution.

Because TVersity by default uses very long URLs to stream medias to the UPnP/DLNA client, Pix-Star is not able to handle them and retrieve the pictures.

This problem happens also with other devices on the market, including for example the Sony Playstation 3. For this reason, TVersity created a configuration that makes the server change it’s url length and then the playstation can work, as well as your Pix-Star.

This mode is called “Play Station 3″, you can change it by going to the settings menu of your TVersity server, here you see:

MEDIA PLAYBACK DEVICE

simply choose:

Play Station 3

do NOT forget to click on the SAVE button at the BOTTOM of the page!!

and your pix-star can display the photos stored inside this UPnP/DLNA server.

ONE LAST POINT:

DO NOT FORGET to DOUBLE CHECK  that you have the LATEST software version of TVersity installed.

Yes, even without any wireless connection, your Pix-Star can work normally and all features are active. No problem.

It will become a basic photo frame then, playing photos that you put in USB stick, SD card or copy to the local memory. Of course till you install a wireless router it WON’T be possible to receive photos by email or access web albums as this requires en Internet connection.

In a word, all features of the frame will work except the one in relation with Internet (receiving photo-mails, sending photo-mails, accessing Web Albums, etc…). But for all other features of a standard photoframe, no problem, your Pix-Star can work normally!

A wireless connection (Wi-Fi) is NOT mandatory to use this product, just that some features related to the Internet won’t be available.

]]> http://blog.pix-star.com/2011/11/27/is-it-possible-to-use-my-pix-star-even-if-i-have-no-wireless-wi-fi-connection-at-home/feed/lang/en/ 0 http://blog.pix-star.com/2011/11/22/why-my-pix-star-photoframe-slide-show-does-not-show-all-the-pictures-especially-web-albums-and-weather/ http://blog.pix-star.com/2011/11/22/why-my-pix-star-photoframe-slide-show-does-not-show-all-the-pictures-especially-web-albums-and-weather/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:05:05 +0000 Pixstar http://blog.pix-star.com/?p=517 Continue reading →]]> As you’ve probably already noticed while using your Pix-Star, it offers many different type of slidehows. You can practically launch any kind of slideshow from just 1 picture, to 1 album or even a combination of albums.

Also as the Pix-Star has a local memory, and at the same time can access photos from the web and from USB sticks or SD cards, it can play albums from various sources.

So when you are launching a slideshow you should first check which source of photos it is going to play. For example, if you launch a “play all pictures” slideshow from the local memory then the web album pictures won’t be inside this slideshow, same for weather information. But the pictures coming from email will be in the slide show as they are inside the “My Local Albums” menu.

As you’ve seen also, on the top of the main menu, just above “My Inbox” you have a button called “Play all Pictures”. This button is the default button for playing a slide show of ALL the photos of your Pix-Star, no matter from which album or which source they come.

We strongly suggest, especially for non technical-savvy users to use this slideshow. It is by the way the default slide show that will run AUTOMATICALLY when you unpack the product the first time or after a factory reset.

It is the EASIEST slideshow, that you can be sure to have ALL your photos inside, including Web album pictures, Weather, Photo-mail, SD card, USB stick, etc…

]]> http://blog.pix-star.com/2011/11/22/why-my-pix-star-photoframe-slide-show-does-not-show-all-the-pictures-especially-web-albums-and-weather/feed/lang/en/ 0 http://blog.pix-star.com/2011/08/16/how-to-manage-the-photos-stored-inside-the-memory-of-my-pix-star-wirelessly-from-my-computer-samba/ http://blog.pix-star.com/2011/08/16/how-to-manage-the-photos-stored-inside-the-memory-of-my-pix-star-wirelessly-from-my-computer-samba/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 05:47:33 +0000 Pixstar http://blog.pix-star.com/?p=477 Continue reading →]]> As you know the latest wireless photoframes from Pix-Star (PXT510xxxxx, FotoConnect XD) are equipped with a technology called “SAMBA” which makes your Pix-Star behave like a network disk on your local network (make sure your Pix-Star WiFi connection is properly configured).

It is very easy from a PC or a MAC to browse wirelessly the content of the memory of the Pix-Star directly from the file manager of the computer. You can then copy photos to the frame memory, delete photos, create new folders, reorganise photos, change folder names, change file names, etc…

Here a few more information on how to do this easily.

- If your computer is a PC.

On the PC, open the File Manager and look on the left side at the “network neighboorhood” section. When you click on this choice you should directly see a disk called ” Pix-Star “, if not then try to go to the icon called ” MSHOME “, your Pix-Star is inside.

Once you’ve found the Pix-Star network disk, you just click on it to open, inside you will see a disk called ” Share “, click one more time and the disk called ” Pix-Star” which is the local memory of your frame. Form here you can start to create new folders, add pictures, remove pictures, etc… directly wirelessly from the PC.

Once added, the pictures will be immediatly visible from the frame ” Local album ” menu or inside the Frame File Manager menu.

Easy!

- If your computer is a MAC.

Open the finder of your MAC, normally on the left side you should see a section called ” SHARED “. Inside your Pix-Star disk should be already visible. Then double click on it to open it, normally after a few seconds it should display a disk called ” SHARE ” this is where you need to enter by double clicking again. The next step should then show you the Pix-Star disk which is actually the memory of your frame.

From here you can start to create new folders, add pictures, remove pictures, etc… directly wirelessly from yoru computer. Once added the pictures will be immediatly visible from the frame ” My Local album ” menu or inside the File Manager menu of the frame.

Easy too!

The thing is that MAC don’t support this UPnP technology. It is then necessary to install a piece of software on your MAC so that it can ‘speak’ UPnP and stream its pictures over the local network to devices, such as your Pix-Star.

Several companies developp such software so you may try whichever you want. We like to use eyeconnect which is simple and easy to configure. And it works great with Pix-Star!

Have a look at their web site:

Add UPnP to your MAC with Eyeconnect

Enjoy streaming your photos with Pix-Star!

Take the USB stick or the SD card that contains the pictures you want to copy to the frame and plug it to the device (look at the back of the device for USB and SD card port).

The frame will display a logo on the main menu and a message that invites you to automatically start a slide show from this source, you can discard this message. Then go to the File Manager accessible from the main menu and browse your USB or SD card source. You should now see your pictures.

You can select the one you want to copy one by one (move the cursor to the picture then press “OK / PLAY”) or, better, if you want to copy all of them just press the “MENU” button when you are on any of the pictures, it will display a menu inside which you have the “SELECT ALL” choice.

Press MENU again if not done yet, to display the pop up menu and choose ” Copy selected pictures to… ” this will pop up a window in which u can choose the destination directory. You can even create a new local directory inside the frame.

After this choice the frame will start to copy. It may take some time depending on the number of pictures and their size. Pix-Star will automatically resize them to fit the screen size and optimize the memory usage without of course impacting the quality of the picture.

So in theory any SD card is supported and there is no limitation in size.

Pix-Star has been tested with SD cards up to 32GB without any problem.

This is quite convenient and fast for those who want it simple and would like to see all the content of the USB or SD card in one big slide show.

What should you do if you only want to display some or all of the pictures in one specific directory?

1- MY LOCAL ALBUMS: This first and simplest approach should be sufficient in most cases: go to the “My Local Albums” menu where you can access the USB disk or the SD card (shown in GREEN).

Once in this sub menu, you’ll see a tree showing all pictures and directories on your device (directories are displayed in GREEN). When you move the cursor to a directory, it will display (after approximately 2 seconds) a mini-slide show allowing you to PREVIEW the pictures within the directory. Should you want to see a more extensive view, simply click on it and you will access the directory.

If you move the cursor onto a picture file, you will see a preview of that picture.

You can directly launch a slide show of the CURRENT directory using the menu on the first line called “Play albums” (in BLUE): this will play a slide show of the current directory, all its pictures PLUS all sub-directories contained within.

This menu is “recursive” meaning it will include all sub-directories within the main directory then stop when it arrives at the last one. The same process applies for SD cards and USB memory sticks.

This is the recommended browsing method as it is the easiest and, with the preview option on the right, it is also more “visual”.

2- FILE MANAGER: For those who prefer more control in their picture selection and preview process, we recommend the FILE MANAGER.

Basically once you open the file manager and choose the SD card or USB device, it is similar to using the Local Albums method, in that you can view and access your directories and see the pictures in each directory.

The primary difference between the two methods is the screen layout.

The File Manager offers one significant advantage over the “local albums” method: you can LAUNCH A SLIDE SHOW WITH THE PICTURES YOU SELECT. It is a totally customizable slide show!

How do you do that? Click on each picture you want to include in the slide show. Once you’re done, click on the MENU button. In the pop-up menu, choose “launch slide show”. A slide show of your selected pictures will then start.

These two menus offer very useful and simple ways for you to browse through pictures on your SD card or USB stick. Try them for your next slide show!

Pix-Star allows you to store 2 types of pictures in 2 different locations (menu):

1- The “My Local Album” menu stores pictures in your frame from direct emails or those that are copied from an SD card or a USB stick.

They can easily be deleted through the “File Manager” or when the slide show is playing by using the MENU button.  This button displays a “menu bar” on the left side of the screen, which includes a delete button.

2- The “My Web Albums” menu stores pictures from Web Albums (Pix-Star and RSS web albums), which were configured via the www.pix-star.com web site. In this case, it is NOT possible to delete these pictures from the frame’s user interface.  These pictures can only be deleted through the www.pix-star.com web site.

This is because these pictures are FULLY controlled by the web site. The frame cannot modify these albums except to synchronize their content with the web site and play slide shows.

Once a picture (or a whole album) has been deleted on the web site, you must wait a few minutes for the frame to be updated. You must also ENSURE your Pix-Star is CONNECTED to the Internet, so it can access our servers. If the frame is OFFLINE, it will not update its content according to the changes made to the server!

This should help you better manage the content of your Pix-Star!