Ceiva Advanced Digital Photo Receiver

I bought one for my 72 year old mother despite the mixed reviews online. It seemed that with the new model, some of the problems had been worked out and it was worth a shot. I figured I would beat the Christmas rush and get everything set up at my house before I wrapped the present. We could just plug it in and not worry about the tech support issues on Christmas Day.

Well here I am, about 12 hours after I first opened the box and I'm still waiting to finish downloading my photos and channels.

Here's the process: 1) I created an account and registered the receiver. I purchased the extended warranty and got the one year subscription. This was an easy set up and there were no problems here. 2) I selected 17 pictures from my computer and uploaded them to the site. Again, no real problems here. I used a program to reduce the size of the photos to less than 100k and reduced them to 640x480 pictures because of the info I read here. 3) I attempted to dial in to a local number and download the pictures. Here is where the trouble started. I had to dial in at least a dozen different times because of connection failures. I kept getting messages like "congestion" and "general failure". These messages have appeared over these past 12 hours. I had to unplug and restart the Receiver twice because it froze after attempting downloading. 4) I finally got the pictures downloaded and then attempted to add the Weather Channel, and a couple of picture channels to the Receiver. I went through the procedure to add the Weather Channel on the Website. It told me it was added, but never showed up in my "pictures to download" folder. I emailed customer support and got an automated reply back. I tried entering a different Zip Code and amazingly it worked for Minneapolis, but not St. Paul. 5) I then attempted to delete pictures through the website. I went through the ones I wanted to trash and followed the procedures as directed. The pictures were never deleted, so the channels did not download to the Receiver, because there wasn't space. I finally selected the pictures to delete on the Receiver itself and tried to download the channels again. I was finally able to download the Channels after several more failed attempts to connect to the network. 6) There are also ways on the website to change the duration of display preferences on the receiver. So far the changes I made in these preferences have not made it on any of the downloads. My pictures are stuck on 5 second display. I'm still working on trying to resolve this issue.

This might work out OK if you are willing to take the time to work through all these problems. If you are giving this to an elderly person or someone who has little or no computer experience, think again. You will probably have to provide tech support for them for this to work properly. I hate to think about all the people trying to get pictures on this thing Christmas Eve or Day.

The display itself seems to be adequate. The pictures are fairly bright and can easily be seen, even in a well lit room. The angle of viewing is OK, but not great. It's kind of like the old passive matrix computer screens...well, better than that, but not up to the quality of current LCD technology.

Improvements that I would like to see are viewing preferences on the display and a way to directly transfer pictures to the display without going through Ceiva. I realize this ruins their "razorblade" scenario for making money through annual subscriptions, but there has to be a better way of accomplishing transfer of the photos.


Not perfect but I still love them!   April 12, 2004
Carol Watkins (Baltimore, MD United States)
36 out of 39 found this review helpful

I have purchased three Ceiva receivers over the past several years.

I bought my first Ceiva for my (now) 97 year old grandmother when we realized that she was developing Alzheimer's. I liked the fact that I could use captions to jog her memory about names and faces. As her memory faded, I was able to alter the speed of the picture rotation to accomadate her needs. She says that all the residents of her unit want one. The nursing staff must look at the Ceiva too because they know when I put on new pictures.

Next I got a Ceiva for my in-laws. They don't need captions to remind them of our names, but they appreciate the postcard option where we can write longer descriptions of the events in the picture. The photos are also good as thank-you cards. We take a picture of our kids using the gift, and have them write a thank-you card in the margin.

My parents seemed a little envious of my grandmother's frame. Around that time, the Ceiva 2 came out. Setup was a little more complicated. The new frames allow the recipient to delete his or her own pictures. My parents have used this function to delete pictures they don't want. Everyone else loves the Weather Channel feature, but I discovered that they didn't when they twice deleted it from their frame. My parents really like new pictures. For when I am too lazy to do this, there is a picture rotation function. I like that the new frame holds more pictures than the old one.

My inlaw's frame eventually ceased to work. (That one I bought several years ago from ebay) It is difficult to trouble-shoot the frames from a distance. My inlaws brought it back to me so I could interface with tech support. I was able to find the information I needed online and customer support was responsive to my email. I have not tried to reach customer support by phone so I can't comment on the phone support problems experienced by others.

These frames do not have extremely high picture quality. However they are great for recipients who are not very computer literate. When my daughter leaves for college this fall, we will probably make photo CDs with PhotoShop, add an autorun feature and let her watch high quality pictures on her computer.


Great gift for loved ones without internet access   July 10, 2004
catsndogs (Sacramento, CA)
29 out of 30 found this review helpful

This product has a very specific role. It makes the perfect gift for someone who is not very computer saavy. If the person has easy email and internet access, it makes more sense (and is much cheaper) to send pictures to them through other means.

My husband and I purchased this frame for his mom. We had previously tried to give her a computer but it collected dust. Since she loves pictures of the grandkids and we live several hours away, we thought this would be a good gift.

The first step--plugging it in--was simple. The frame needs to have a location with easy access to both phone and electricity, or you'll have cords all over the place. Once attached, it starts displaying the Ceiva company information, including the customer service phone number.

Getting the frame to properly connect and load pictures was more involved. First, it needs to be registered at the Ceiva site (that had to happen "off-site" since my mother-in-law doesn't have a computer). The website is where you load the pictures and set the guidelines for the frame (what times to turn it on and off and what number for the frame to call to load new pictures, etc) Then you need to purchase a subscription which costs almost as much as the frame on a yearly basis. Once that's done, it's supposed to be as easy as someone pushing a button (the big one on the base of the frame) and the pictures would load.

Unfortunately, it didn't work at first. Our frame took a few calls to customer service (luckily a circulating pre-loaded picture on the frame) and emails from us to correct the problem. Telephone customer service was courteous and gracious to my mother-in-law. Email customer service was slow and sometimes didn't respond directly, though they did take care of a separate problem eventually.

From my mother-in-law's perspective, the solution was just pushing that big button multiple times, intermittently over the course of the day, until it finally connected. I'm not sure it was the same solution from Ceiva's point of view.

Once that was resolved, EVERYTHING has worked like a dream. The frame revolves 30 different pictures. On the website, I keep everything in an album so I know which ones she's seen. My brother-in-law several states away can upload pictures onto her frame as well. We can also send captions with the pictures or special greetings on Mother's Day etc. She is absolutely thrilled, and I will probably be buying one for my grandmother (who is in a board and care home) this year.

PROS: Fabulous gift for the computer-less, can be accessed (on invitation/with password) by other loved ones to load their photos, easy to plug in, seamless operation once working

CONS: Expensive cost of subscription (factor it into your gift giving), took some time and customer service input to get it connected, unable to edit/crop photos on website (do it before), cost of ordering prints of photographs for the receiver (we use a different company)


Beware   December 13, 2003
Patrick McCuen (Sacramento, CA USA)
24 out of 30 found this review helpful

I made the mistake of getting my mother and mother in-law Ceivas last year for Christmas. Both have failed within the first year of use. Ceiva's customer service is difficult to get ahold of (never respond to e-mails, 20min hold on phone) and inflexible on their policies. I made the further mistake of buying a new receiver to replace the one that failed after the warranty expired and found out that the 3 year prepaid subscription was not transferable to the new receiver unless I paid an additional year. Now I have a subscription through December of 2006 for a product I expect will fail within six months.

When it works the product is simple to use but the picture quality is substantially below what any computer LCD screen provides.


CEIVA SUCKS!   December 17, 2004
Nancy Mitford (New Jersey)
24 out of 29 found this review helpful

I was very excited about buying a CEIVA for my technology-phobic, West Coast parents, who are in their 80s. I thought they would love seeing pictures of the grandkids, and they did... the one time it worked. After MANY attempts to fix it, including over a dozen phone calls to CEIVA to try to get the problem resolved, CEIVA acknowledged defeat and told us to return the unit to them. (I might add in that 1) calls to customer service take FOREVER as they will keep you on hold for a a LOOOOONG time before you actually get to talk to anyone; 2) they weren't particularly nice during the calls, and intimated to my parents that perhaps they weren't smart enough to figure out how the thing worked).

Well, my parents returned the unit to CEIVA as instructed, after pointing out to the company that we hadn't bought it directly from them. CEIVA said this was ok -- they even provided a return authorization number. My parents promptly mailed it off. Thank goodness I told them as a precaution to send it with delivery tracking and insurance. CEIVA never acknowledged having received it; when I contacted them 6 weeks later to say that I hadn't seen a refund on my credit card, they couldn't find the receiver; then, when they finally did find it, they refused to refund our money, stating that their only remedy was to send a new receiver. Well, at this point, as you can imagine, my parents didn't want the friggin' thing. So I am now stuck with a $150 receiver and nobody to use it. CEIVA, and CEIVA customer service, is horrible. I wouldn't recommend their products to ANYONE.