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My intentions were to write a page explaining the problems with printing photo's with the wtv/msntv set top internet appliance/receiver.
A lot of the reasons for poor printing results of photo's are:
1) lack of control over initial scan.
the scanning options for pc users are confusing, not setting the scanner ahead of time for the desired output, can lead to poor quality (grainy) scans, ie just using the default settings for _everything_.
2) photo ink cannot be used correctly by wtv/msntv users.
you can install it, and usually get a warning cartridge not found, but you have no option to tell the printer you are using photo ink, so it cannot give you photo ink output quality.
3) upgrade of Nov. 1999
the "spell check" upgrade brought many complaints of white lines in the finished printing of photo's, that were not there before the upgrade. This glitch (to my knowledge) has not been corrected.
4) Photo paper
photo paper, even without the use of photo ink, can create a better finished printing. The coated paper "stands the ink up" better than regular ink jet paper "does not allow as much of the ink to _spread out_ upon the spraying of the ink. The only problem is photo paper can be _expensive_!
5) TV screen view vs printed result
Without even getting into ppi's, dpi's and lpi, the main reason your printed photo (or anything with color) will not turn out as you view it, lies in the fact that the tv's (or pc monitor's) displayed output is based on a Red Green Blue (RGB)
system.
Ink jet printer's use a Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta color ink cartridge, and a Black cartridge if the printer is a two cartridge printer.
Using a one cartridge printer to print photo's will bring even worse results, in trying to print a color image that has any black in it at all, the CYM cartridge will mix up a dirty grey instead of a true black color.
Plus each printer has its own "quirks" in printing color images; HP is known to print lighter than the screen, Canon prints darker.....
6) You get none of the options available to pc users.
Not that even a high resolution scanner, a new pc using using psp7 or photoshop software to enhance the scanned image, using photo ink and paper, on a high resolution printer to get the maximum quality output, you still won't get a "kodak" quality picture like you would from the local drug store. (This seeing my neighbor's $4000 pc system at work.....)
so how can you expect to get anything close to that given the 3 printing options, and two ways to print wtv/msntv gives you.
_My_ conclusions: your photo's are not going to turn out that well, if you have a _digital_ camera
forget about it, the huge difference between the camera's resolution and the finished printed photo will be terrible. I would suggest you put your photo's on a webpage, use meta tags to create a slideshow of your images.
There are always the photo stores, centers that can make _real_ reproductions of photo's even those on the web (they would need to be on a published page with it's own url, not in an email; unless they have an email acceptance system in place to use attachments.
There are a number of links here to look through, and to get information from, you will notice all but one are for pc user's; but thats the net. Wtv/msntv is such a small (and ungrowing) market very few "professional" web sites provide adjusted info for it............
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