Moving away from the current crop of nearly identical digital photo frames that do nothing but serve up pictures, Sony released a more capable multi-tasking frame on Wednesday with the Vaio CP1. Besides display photos from camera memory cards, the new frame comes with Wi-Fi for pulling images from the Web, playing radio, and even delivering RSS feeds.
The frame’s 7-inch LCD can display 16 million colors in 800 x 480 resolution, making it one of the higher quality displays used in digital photo frames. It accepts photos from SD cards, CompactFlash and of course Sony’s own Memory Stick Pro format, and has 128MB of internal memory for storing photos locally.
Thanks to a built-in Wi-Fi card, the frame can also access photos on Picasa, giving access to up to four online albums simultaneously. An RSS reader also makes it possible to display headlines and other live content alongside slideshows, and the frame’s built-in speakers can be used to pump up music from its Internet radio player.
Sony’s CP1 frames will sell for $300 when they go on sale in mid-October.
