Nikon NF-300i Brings Glasses-Free 3D To Digital Photo Frames

You already prefer your movies in 3D, so why get stuck with 2D when enjoying your photos?  Kick those flat images to the curb with the Nikon NF-300i, an autostereoscopic digital photo frame that, oddly enough, no one can buy.

That’s right, you can’t purchase one.  Instead, Nikon will loan you a unit when you sign up with My Picturetown, a cloud-based 3D conversion and picture hosting service.  You pay a subscription to the service, send them your stash of 2D JPEGs and pull down the converted 3D stills down to your borrowed frame’s memory for display.

The Nikon NF-300i has a 7.2-inch LCD (800 x 600 resolution) with double-density lenticular lenses for enjoying all those 3D images in glasses-free convenience.  It can, of course, be used for 2D photographs, too, which you can save at the integrated 4GB of storage.  For connectivity, the device comes with ethernet, 802.11 b/g WiFi and one USB port.

It’s running a modified version of Android 2.1, with dedicated apps for displaying the pictures and playing movies (no Market access, though).  A bunch of widgets are also in tow, including ones for displaying time, weather, feeds and more.

My Picturetown will only be available in Japan, in the meantime, priced at  ¥1,995 (around $24) for a month or ¥19,950 for an entire year ($244).  With the membership, you get hosting for the images, three 3D conversions a month and one Nikon NF-300i, which you can keep until you unsubscribe.  Honestly, this sounds like a bad deal.  We guess this is test run for the 3D frames, though, aimed at those with piles of disposable income.

[Nikkon (Japanese)]