I recently got a Samsung Frame TV to use as an NFT display at home. I had been looking for one for a while and I finally pulled the trigger last week. The way the Frame works is that it's a TV when it's on, and it's an art display when it's off. But I really don't care about the TV part. I just wanted a good looking art display.
There are a lots of purpose-built NFT displays on the market right now, including Tokenframe, Blackdove, Muse, and others. And I was very close to getting a Muse Frame.
But ultimately I decided on the Samsung Frame because it was (1) cheaper for its size (50"), (2) it looks cool, and (3) I was fine with just a simple high-quality display. I think there will be lots more software and dongles created in the future for people who want to showcase their NFTs on whatever they happen to have at home.
However, if you're a crypto and NFT purist, this maybe isn't the display for you -- at least right now. Out of the box, it doesn't connect with any crypto wallets. And so you're not going to automatically see the provenance of each art piece (more on this below). Instead, the default method is to just upload JPEGs to the TV from Samsung's SmartThings app (insert right-click-save-as jokes here).
Overall, I'm really happy with the display. Here are my initial thoughts:
I have it set to randomly rotate through my art every 3 minutes. There's also a motion detection feature that works reasonably well. If it doesn't detect any motion, the display will go completely to sleep. But for some reason, it occasionally gets possessed and the TV will randomly turn on. Last week it kept turning on old Baywatch episodes. Possibly user error.
Samsung's SmartThings app is bad. It's buggy and a pain to use. For example, even though I've given it complete access to my phone's photos, they never seem to show up. I have to limit access and then go and select the ones I want to use in my gallery.
I have found that I prefer when the art is full bleed versus within the Frame's skeuomorphic picture mat. This is a new form of art and so I like the idea of breaking past traditions. But unless your images are 16x9 and a high enough resolution (I have generally found > 3000px wide to work), then you're going to get prompted to insert and select a mat design.
I have solved this problem by manually cropping and editing the individual pieces. Some NFT collections, such as CyberBrokers, also give you vector files which allows you to play around as you see fit. Again, if you're an NFT and/or art purist, you're probably not going to like this. But I think of it as curating the pieces.
Most of my art is on Ethereum, Solana, and Tezos. Being able to upload whatever I want is helpful, because not all NFT displays support all of the chains. The Muse Frame, for instance, only supports Ethereum and Polygon right now.
PNG files and video files aren't supported natively. This is a significant drawback and so eventually I know I'm going to have to change up the software that powers this display. And there are options. Bright Moments offers display software for holders of its NFTs. Fred Wilson's venture firm USV created this setup. And I'm sure there are countless others. These can solve the provenance issue mentioned above by pulling directly from the various blockchains.
In the end, I knew what I was getting into with the Frame. I knew it wasn't a purpose-built NFT display and I was fine with that. It's still early days in this space. But it sure is nice to finally see my NFT art in large format.
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