Kodak introduces world's first OLED wireless photo frame

Kodak takes the competition in the suddenly crowded field of wireless photo frames to the next level with its announcement of the OLED Wireless Frame. The camera company joins Samsung and Sony in introducing new frames that feature built-in Wi-Fi to stream photos from your hard drive or the Internet.

But Kodak's entry stands out for its 7.6-inch OLED screen, the first on a digital photo frame. The display technology promises superior contrast ratios over LCDs, and Sony has already released a 11.1-inch TV, the XEL-1, that is OLED-based. The OLED Wireless Frame also stands out by offering 2GB of internal memory to store photos, whereas Samsung and Sony's new Wi-Fi frames offer a comparatively paltry amount. Kodak is additionally rolling out new Easyshare Digital Display Software for PCs to make it easy to organize media (including music and videos) that you want to stream to the OLED Wireless frame.

Of course, there's a catch, and that's price. As the $2,500 price tag on Sony's XEL-1 suggests, the market for OLED is in its infancy, and consequently products using the display tech are highly expensive. Kodak's OLED Wireless Frame will cost a whopping $999 when it is available for purchase in November. The good news is that this product will probably prod other frame manufacturers into creating OLED frames of their own, which will drop prices over the long term. In the meantime, you can just drool over your rich friend's OLED Wireless Frame when he or she plunks down a grand for one.