Cheap Chinese Digital Picture Frames Rejected at US Border Over Fire Concerns

Written on Jul 3, 2008 by Brian and filed under News

United States port officials are rejecting shipments of up to one million digital picture frames from China due to concerns over fire. There have been a rash of complaints recently as low-end off-brand frames sold at retailers like Best Buy and Wal-mart have spontaneously caught on fire.

“The recent surge in popularity of the digital picture frame has increased the number of vendors in China exponentially” states John Graham of USB Digital Frames. ‘With this increase in the manufacturing base we are seeing a lot of unqualified companies trying to cash in on the craze. The problems we are seeing are that many vendors are using substandard and potentially dangerous components. These sub-grade components have been running at very high temperatures and have been catching fire.”

The frames in question are branded under many generic names but are commonly using operating systems and LCD screens not engineered for the high volume usage that most digital picture frames operate under. Office fires reported in Freehold New Jersey, Greenwood Colorado and throughout the country have caused major property damage. The source of these fires has been traced back to the faulty digital picture frames. The dangerous frames are made by Sun Plus Technology whose screens and operating system was originally designed for portable DVD players.

The purpose-built digital picture frames and screens used by the Kodak, HP and other mainstream brands and not affected by this issue.

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