Pandigital makes cooking fun again

I enjoy trying out new recipes, so I've downloaded hundreds of them from my favorite foodie sites. The problem I have with getting recipes off the Internet is that most of the time I have to print them, and I hate wasting paper and ink on this. I recently came across the Pandigital Kitchen HDTV/Digital Cookbook/Digital Photo Frame (yes, that's the product's name), and so far, I like what it can do.

The 15-inch LCD display (obviously) functions as an HDTV, a cookbook, and a photo frame created specifically for those of you who spend some serious time in the kitchen. Since it is a kitchen display, the company ensured its "mess-proof" design came sealed inside glass to protect it against all those ingredients found in a kitchen. To keep it out of the way, the display can be mounted on the wall or under a cabinet, and it also includes interchangeable faceplates to match your kitchen's decor.

Those of us who won't settle for anything with less than 1GB of storage may not like the scant 512MB built-in memory, but it does include a media reader so you can always use your own memory cards. When used as a cookbook, the Pandigital Kitchen display can store up to 3,200 recipes, which can be added straight to the frame's internal memory. It also supports various video, audio, and image formats (JPEG, Motion JPEG, MPEG 1, MPEG 4 and AVI), which means you can download other media (podcasts, webisodes) from the web to compliment your virtual cookbook.

The HDTV part features an HDMI connection, a 1280x720 resolution, and an ATSC/NTSC tuner so you can watch and follow along with your favorite cooking shows. Otherwise, you can just upload digital photos directly to its memory or through a wireless connection and play slideshows during your next dinner party. Pandigital's new kitchen display was unveiled earlier this week at the International Home and Housewares Show 2008 and will retail for $399 when it becomes available in June.