Slashdot Mirror

After going through two articles and a blog, we get to the Mirasol site. Mirasol is straightforward - each pixel is a flexible membrane in an air gap. It's bistable; either the membrane is against the front plate (dark) or against the back plate (light), pushed there by an electrostatic charge. So it's either monochrome, or an 8-color technology if RGB pixels are provided. By putting in more pixels, they can dither their way up to 3 bits of color per pixel, for 512 different colors. This costs resolution, of course. Their technical paper talks about dithering over time at 50Hz to get more even shades. But if they do that, they lose their power-saving advantage. It costs power to change a pixel.

This is one of many bistable persistent display technologies. Kent Displays has had a similar technology, cholesteric LCD devices, for years, used mostly for big display signs and military applications. Until recently, Kent's displays were very expensive, but they've finally solved the cost problem. This year's DEFCON badge has a built-in Kent display.

  For OLPC I do they really need something to play HD video and compete with the latest Dell/Toshiba laptops,
    I don't think so, these are for third world counties where something like a speak and spell would be high tech.
    Personally they shouldn't be using LCD's anyhow the backlight are power hungry. I think Electronic Paper like E-Ink, and Kodak/Kent have developed and is now using in Jeff Bozos new E-book thing, Kindle ( I just keep thinking of Fahrenheit 451 on that one)
http://www.kentdisplays.com/

  The PXA uses MMX (like on Pentium's), I don't see what is proprietary for that, so what I can't use their proprietary libs, who cares.
  I have been using PXA and Blackfin for video for a while now, and never even heard about proprietary libs/extensions, but again the first think I did was ignore any software tools from them and went straight to GAS and GCC.
  Anyhow where I work Marvell has been more then happy to dump any documentation we want about these chips. They don't have any tech support for problems, so we are in RTFM mode when we get stuck. Fortunately things have been very smooth, even good JTAG tools.

  I think ARM has far better ecosystem for tools, code and support then MIPS. I mean I have watched code I built for one embedded device run on several PDA and even an IPhone without recompile, blew my mind.

An LCD display that needs power only when the image is changes is old.
Check out Kent Displays. It was spun off in 1993 from a project at Kent State University.
I wonder why it never took off.

Sounds like you need some sort of non-screen-refreshing non-light-emitting display. Now, don't take that as an advertisement... I just couldn't find a better link right away.

Persistent, reflective displays have been around for years. They're used mostly for signs, and for sunlight-readable military displays. (One of the military features - displays readable with IR night vision equipment.) These haven't been used much for e-books, but prototypes have been built.

You can buy an E-Ink Prototyping Kit for $3000. This is a sheet of "E-ink" material, with the little balls that rotate, mounted on top of an 6 inch LCD panel, attached to a little computer. Runs Linux, even. This gets you a little black and white display. Since there's an LCD panel behind it, this can't be cheaper than an LCD panel. It is sunlight-readable, though.

There are some E-Ink point of purchase displays, but they're fixed signs where sections can be turned on and off, much like the special LCD displays that are used in control panels. These are still a few hundred dollars. Along the same line are the various "E-Ink clocks".

If you want a display that holds its image with power off and is sunlight readable, try Kent Displays. It's not "E-Ink", but it actually works.

Worse, all E-ink really offers is an "e-Ink front layer" for someone else's LCD. That's not "digital paper", it's just a reflective display technology that's as bulky as other reflective display technologies. And the other guys have been shipping product for years.

E-Ink's latest press release indicates desperation. They're pre-announcing something they hope to display as a prototype at a trade show next year. You can't keep doing that sort of thing year after year.

At the recent Society for Information Display show almost every major player had a flavor of electronic ink prototype at their booth.

You guys need to look around at what else is out there before you get too excited about a flashy news announcement.

Kent Displays has had a similar technology since the late 1990s. Their displays require no power when not changing and are sunlight-readable. Update is sluggish, so they are used mostly for signs, clocks, and other less-dynamic applications.

I'd like to have the mp3/ogg player integrated into a cell phone than have a separate player and phone, because a phone can pause the mp3 automatically on incoming calls. I wouldn't mind to have PDA functions in the phone either.

I want 3G - UMTS with IPv6, GPS locator and the ability to hack the software on the phone/PDA in any way that would not infringe with the phone company subscription.

Style is important. I want something sleek and stylish that does not attract attention. No triangular buttons everywhere or translucent plastic, please!
I like the style of Palm and Sonys recent machines. Most WinCE and Nokia machines are horrible, though. ---

I don't think this is it... but the benefits of Cholestic technology definitely looks interesting.
Reflectivity of ink, 0 power consumption after initial refresh, wide viewing angles, etc. etc. etc.

Kent Displays has different displays that use a technology that only uses power to update the display - that way, when the image is static, it uses no power.

Don't know if they fully support what you're looking for - looks like they go up to
800x600.

Kent Displays has different displays that use a technology that only uses power to update the display - that way, when the image is static, it uses no power.

Don't know if they fully support what you're looking for - looks like they go up to
800x600.

Kent Displays is already shipping LCD screens that are more reflective than other LCD technologies and keep their image for an indefinite amount of time when powered off. Unfortunately the refresh rate isn't that great.