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Printing Out A New Monitor
wackypak writes: "Seiko / Epson have developed a new technology which allows it to print out a video screen onto paper! Believe it or not, they've even demoed the technology, and hope to use it for mobile phones! This may be the death of paper as we know it -- imagine being delivered an electronic video newspaper every morning, then *recycling* it. Or even delivering your speech as a multimedia piece of paper! Or having walls and walls of video wallpaper!" Or ending more sentences with exclamation points!
Doesn't everyone remember the dozens of articles written years ago about that guy in the MIT Media Lab who had the exact same idea (called electronic ink, then)...All the pop. mags picked it up.
Even check out the corporate spinoff: www.eink.com and also check out the neat-o simple flash anim off of the "Technology" section...
Old idea, new company trying it...
That'd be fantastic if these things didn't have a (relatively) short lifetime. One thousand hours of life for the blues may be one thing on a cell phone, but when you print out a massive, custom display for a bill board or a customized, integral display for a car the lifetime becomes a major concern. If you would want your bill board on constantly (you would) you've only got about a month and a half of life. Also, the displays degrade _more_ under light, and since your bill board isn't moving, this creates a problem. It's definetly a neat idea and maybe it'll improve. Let's hope so
According to the article, the red LEP has a life span of 100,000 hours. Even in this early phase, one could look forward to mobile phones which could be powered on in standby mode for 11.4 years before needing to be overhauled...in bright red ! RGB could be reserved for active use.
Imagine if this technology were used to develop a tattoo friendly ink... get a silicon mesh implanted under your skin and a piesoelectric power supply and have your favorite tattoo artist inject this stuff. You could upload a new tattoo every day.
-Erik
Same goes for this, for $20, pop a new screen on the tv. Makes the display area itself cheap, so the major cost of the tv becomes the internal electronics.
Just think... These screens could become the equivilent of trash bags. Just keep a few in the closet.. when you need a new one the old one gets thrown away. groovy.
They're new and improved!
GLAD kitchen-sized TV screens
100 per box
OK, so the display's only good for 1000 hours. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I keep my cell phone turned on 24 hours a day. So, if I do the math...
1000 hours / 24 hours per day = 41 1/3 days.
So it looks like I'll have to replace my cell phone every month and a half if it uses one of these displays. Doesn't seem that useful to me. Maybe they could have a red "screen saver" mode that would just use the red display elements unless you needed full color. That would at least give it a little better lifetime, since then their assumption that a cell phone is only "in use" 200 hours a year would be a little more valid.
However, I still think that a display that is only good for 1000 hours of use is probably not going to be that widely used at all. I mean, sure, the rest of the crowd here is talking about a lot of neat things:
paper thin TVs - How many hours of TV do *you* watch a day? More than 3? Then this display is dead in less than a year.
digital wallpaper - Do you really want to re-wallpaper your house every month and a half?
If the technology is cheap enough, then sure, it can be used for things like an electronic newspaper. I would really like to see that, actually. I'd pay $100 a year (assuming non-continuous usage here) for a thin, flexible display that gave me up to the minute news. Of course, you still need something to drive the display, and then you might be getting into something bulky. But the ideas are there. I just think that someone needs to worry about the 1000 hour lifetime of this technology, rather than just dismissing it.
-Todd
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"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Very impressive, think about what we could do with this, It would be even more impressive if we could have printed out speakers, I mean think of it, the singing telegram that really sings, smiles and dances and will play again whenever... My gosh, I am such a geek romantic... Also See: New ways to exploit the U.S.P.S. Peace, mOfOhAwK
Because PPV molecules contain benzene rings, which allow electrons to move through the molecule, the polymer can act as a semiconductor--and form the basis of a light-emitting diode.
Or a transistor. (Even with only one type of semiconductor you can make a FET.)
Now think about what you can do once you can print transistors with chemical inks.
Then remember you can also print wires, resistors, capacitors, small inductors, and antennas. (You can do a large inductor with a capacitor and an amplifier.)
Densities will likely be too small for a really smart computer. But a slow RISC machine should be trivial. Analog will be easy.
Hybrids on paper from an ink-spitter... Brings a whole new meaning to "printed circuit". B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The problem is the blue pixels only last for 1000 hours. so about every 3/4 of a year you'd have to replace it if you used it for 5 hours a day.
This will more then likely change, the blue pixel lifetimes will rise, when they do then it would be easier to impliment them as screens.
-- iCEBaLM
Because right now, at least, they can't get the blue to last more than 1000 hours. This is fine for cell phones. But for desktops, that would mean replacing your monitor once every 4 months or so if you use a computer as much as I do. And since it still requires some chip manufacturing technology, it just wouldn't be practical. Maybe someday, but not today.
JL
X probably couldn't handle it though...
:)
Probably not - think of the memory required for a frame buffer to support a 1440 dpi monitor.
And on the hardware side, the data transfer rate required to achieve a decent frame rate on, say, a 19" 1440 dpi display must be quite high (too tired to do any calculation on it
But surely, it's nice technology.
The article said users typically used the phones for 200 hours, which is shorter than the life span of the LEP display at a 1000 hours.
200 hours?
Is having the latest technocrap so important that we replace phones after about 8 days of continuous use?
Maybe McPhoneald's should start selling fries with their phones.
This reminds me of an idea I loved from a Michael Marshall Smith book, where every building is covered in something like this pr0n stuff and the colours/patterns are controlled by a central computer for the whole city, and clothing is made of it too. The hero of the story (who has impeccable taste in patterns on his clothes) gets home one day to find an email from the central computer thanking him for being so colour co-ordinated and saying what a pleasure it was to work with him today.
Bet you thought this post would be more interesting.
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Please do not use this document as toilet tissue
are as follows:
Holy CRAP! On the Cambridge Display Technology's home page, the two cell phones on the splash page show a tiny image of Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion! This company gets cool points :)
Application: Okay, we've seen the somewhat uninformed ideas about how this can be used. What exactly is the consistency, durability, etc. of this silicon substrate they're talking about? Why do they talk about such small screens? This suggests to me that either the PPV (the light-emitting polymer) or the silicon cubstrate material is expensive. On the other hand,according to Generics, the size isn't a problem:
Ecological Effects: This isn't going to be disposable, as far as I could read. It sounded short-lived, but not disposable. What effect would the LEP have on the environment (or, for that matter, on the user)?
The Reality: This has been researched since 1989 by the CDT. How long will it take for their efforts to come to fruition? The blue lasts a bit outside 41 days on constant use. The green will last three years. Again- longevity is a problem, and disposability isn't the answer. It looks really cool, though.
That's because your typical current cellphone screen just isn't all that interesting to look at. Put a video screen on the phone and suddenly you've got pr0n and other eye candy to stare at while you should be driving - let's see how many hours of use your phone gets after that.
seanmeister
tc>
tc>
Most Americans don't understand science, and they wouldn't like it if they did.
Hahaha! Porno glasses - now THAT is something we all need!
-FekIhr : monkey - scripter - jerk -
-FekIhr : monkey - scripter - jerk -
http://www.fekihr.com
We once used to worry about technology being abused to make weapons of mass destruction. Now it seems that we'll have to worry about technology being abused by Madison Avenue and the teenybopper demographic to make the future more garish.
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--Hey Doctor Jones! No time for love!
If they have switch rates like 'normal' LEDs (which I expect), it it should be possible to redraw screens at normal video rates.. it will also be possible to build portable 'books' with multiple physical pages....
Hold on... This stuff goes on a SILICON substrate. They may still need a WHOLE lot of work to fit it onto a flexible backing.
Nontheless, it still does mean that we can start to look for nearly-throw-away monitors. -- I mean, who's going to mind that their 19" monitor only lasts a year if the replacement panel only costs $15? (I'm presuming that, by the time they get to market, the green LEPs will have a somewhat longer life.
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Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Of course, if it's cheap enough that might not matter - replacable/upgradable screens would be cool.
Ouch! That reminds me of a current ad campaign visible on the streets of Stockholm. One of the messages is "You have a sweaty broker in your pocket". ;^) (I think the campaign is for WAP phones/services, or something)
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
And the next thing will be the return of screen savers for phones to stop the blue pixels dying... :)
Every month or so as it is anyways.. If a company wants to rent it for more than a month, then just charge them for the "cheap" printout and labor. I think companies would DEFINATELY go for animated COLOR billboards than static paper ones anyday, even if they had to reprint them every month...
I eat the flesh off the living, and I vote!
Neal Stephenson's A Diamond Age has some of this sort of thing. There are moving displays on EVERYTHING... including milk cartons. :)
I think this sounds like very cool tech, but I can see it getting overused and making everything gaudy. I sure hope architects don't do as you suggest. Ignoring the natural play of shadows and shape would really limit the artistic possibilities. I can picture an amazing variety of buildings incorporating traditional techniques as well as LEP displays. My only worry is that these would increase the omnipresence of advertising.
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I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
Christ! The entire POINT of this technology is that is is PAPER and therefor is CHEAP.
You guys are all reacting like paper is $1,000 a square foot a sheet.. Good lord.
I eat the flesh off the living, and I vote!
No one said anything about creating a display on a sheet of paper, or even if the substrate was flexible (which would be a most iteresting feature).
Actually, they did, over a year ago when this was covered in detail in relation to the electronic ink stories here on Slashdot.
Or this one from last week.
Or half a dozen others I found when doing the 30 seconds of research that could have been done before this article was posted as if into a vacuum...
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...soon we can just carry /. in our pockets.
Hopefully this tech is genuine and not just going to vanish into the ether like so many good/futuristic ideas seem to these days.
I read recently about the use of quantum dots in photovoltaic cells. People are using quantum dots to absorb a band of light and to reemit the light at a single wavelength. This could be allowed to tune a photovoltaic cell's sensitivity to match the solar spectrum better.
I'll admit I don't understand the relevant physics, but I wonder whether this technology could be adapted to displays. People working in photovoltaics are also developing cells that use quantum dots to absorb photons and emit electrons, and it seems to my quantum physics naive mind that this process might be reversable to convert free electrons into photons.
People have tried similar things with photovoltaic polymers, but the quantum dots have the advantage that they are highly stable in direct sunlight. It would be cool if the technology could be adapted for displays, because at one stroke it would make the display application cheaper by longer lifespan, and the photovoltaic application cheaper by letting a larger market bear much of the development costs.
I'd like to have a car that has a computer customizable paint job, and that uses the paint job to recharge the battery when it's parked.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Bzzzzzt.
:wq
If you do you'll notice these things only have a 1000 hour lifetime before the blue goes out!! I could see them being used in cell phones, and perhaps clothing that you can "turn on" but to replace your television? Umm who wants to get a new screen printed every week?
That would be a good way to not get people to buy your product, whatever the fsck a lolly wrapper is. ;)
:wq
I can see them military using these screens as new camo for their soliders.
They will have a bunch of these tiny screens sticked together on the clothes and tiny CCD cameras on many angles. The opposite side will display the image on the clothing. This has been attempted before using tiny mirrors and it works so so.... with this new flexible (cheap) display technology, it will give the effect of the Preditor!
Imagine a truck where a huge screen displays the opposite side's camera image and vice versa. If you have ever seen on of those large mirror-carrying trucks you know the effect. Very disorienting and if you don't look carefully it's quite easy to not even notice a truck is there!
Oh yea... and don't forget about the Wallp0rn...
This
Not a chance. Imagine that the side of the tank is displaying what you'd see if you were at right angles to the tank and looking straight at it.
Now, move through 30 degrees. The display is still showing the old picture, but you're seeing it from the wrong angle, so you're seeing a distorted version of the wrong image. It would stand out like a sore thumb.
Now, a pseudo random image would porbably vanish under your notice a lot faster
My Journal
Now I can play all my MPAA approved pr0n in true to life size. Not to mention the endless possibilities for cereal boxes...
0.02 isn't worth much
What's new about this is more the method of manufacturing than the concept (okay, okay, I work for Uniax). Flexible polymer LEDs have been around since the early 1990s (see the 11 June 1992 issue of Science). The problem in getting flexible displays to market has been solving the issues around packaging as the polymers are sensitive to air and moisture and the low workfunction metals used as cathodes are also reactive. Plastic substrates (such as PET) are generally poor oxygen blockers, and give short device lifetimes, however companies like Dow and DuPont are working on new substrate materials and things are looking more and more promising. What is new about this technique is that it gets away from spincasting (think photoresist?) as a processing technique and allows for multiple materials (colors) to be put down in effectively a single layer (people have proposed multilayer polymer devices to do full color, but I've yet to see this implemented). Also, as the solvents for the polymers are pretty nasty (read dissolves plastic ink cartridges), there is some interesting engineering that goes into the system as a whole. To answer some of ryanw's questions: 1) They're quite bright. They can get *much* brighter than a standard monitor. Check the web page for details. 2) The response (turn on) time is very short (nanoseconds). 3) "How 'well' do they respond to electricity?" Light output is proportional to current. This is generally accepted is good. 4) "Why can't you do this with conventional LED technology?" This is a more controversial question, but basically: a) pick and place inorganic LEDs have about reached their resolution limit (and silicon isn't *that* flexible). b) ease of processing - just squirt it on and you're almost done. c) It's relatively inexpensive (whatever that means). Other questions?
"Twenty-five signatures turns the most frightful stupidity into an opinion" -Kirkegaard
Where in the article does it say that the screen is printed on paper?
"Seiko Epson can deposit individual pixels of red, green and blue LEPs directly onto a silicon substrate."
Um, silicon != paper... It sounds like they're working on other substrate possibilities, but right now, they can't print on paper. It just happenes that in order to deposit the LEPs on silicon they're using the same techniques people use to put ink on paper.
Trust me, while it's not as nice as being able to print on paper, it's a LOT nicer than current LCD/silicon tech - It looks as if this particular manufacturing tech won't need the stuff to be in a vacuum at all, while most silicon processing techniques require all air to be removed from the chamber. (Either a vaccum or an inert gas of your choice depending on the process... Or a reactive gas for CVD.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I can now finally print out those damn animated gifs (or MNG's).
+++ATH0
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Did you bother to read the article above?
You refer to two different technologies in your post, both of which are TOTALLY different in design, and implementation in comparison to the one that was posted on Slashdot today.
One of the technologies that you are speaking of uses tiny balls - One side is black with a certain charge, and one side is white with an opposing charge. Depending on the electric charge hitting the paper, the balls flip over displaying the white side, or the black side.
The other technology you're talking about uses a capsule filled with tiny balls. the capsule is a transparent dark color, and the tiny balls inside are white. There are electrodes on the top and bottom of the capsule. Depending on which electrode is powered, the tiny balls in the capsule either go up (making the 'pixel' white), or go down (making it dark blue). It works like a Magic 8 Ball. Kinda.
Now, the technology that was reported today is very different. It actually uses a polymer that emits light when voltage is applied to it. By coloring the polymer red, green, and blue, and spraying it on a base with an opposing charge, you have a color display. It's a solid-state deal. No moving parts, with the exception of the electrons moving through the PPV.
Next time, you might want to read a little more closely. You might learn something.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Errr, that was the mood ring, remember them?
:wq
My one real concern is that the LEP might be very resistant to scratch. If it isn't, and is reasonably cheap, I would be quite happy to say goodbye to those 10k$ digital HDTVs, not to mention the enormous size of my monitor.
Whenever they come up with a new thin screen, they don't talk about putting it on desktop monitors. I hate the amount of space this monster takes up. Why can't they use this to make a nice, cheap flatpanel display, using DVI?
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
When I was researching components for wearable PC's I ran across a site advertising flexible displays; I think I didn't store it in long-term memory (my head, I mean) because it was monochrome. But if a flexible screen is important to you, do look it up. (-8
Btw, there are also roll-up keyboards advertised (on a different site), but when I sent them an e-mail, I never got a response. They were for scientific/research users, and were also waterproof (and for nasty environments generally). Just in case you need one....
Perhaps, but there's a couple of things to consider here.
Would these devices degrade in the sun?
How bright are they? Because they are light-emitting devices (as opposed to regular printing which is light-reflecting), they would need to be very bright indeed to be colorful in daylight. (There's an electronic billboard near my place that uses high-intensity LEDs, for instance.) I doubt that they would be bright enough.
Actually Xerox (Parc) started the initial development.
The initial idea for this was somewhere in '81,
but the Xerox management goons said they Xerox
wasn't 'interested' in digital paper. Imagine
if they would have given the go-ahead then.
think of the possibilities for the single male's bathroom...
"Wow Tom, you've got WALLPR0N!!!!"
you all know this should be "Score +(bignumber):Funny"
From a motherboard manual, error beep codes: S-L-L-L-SS: Speaker Error
There is also an issue with the size of the screen. Currently they've only managed a 6.5cm (2.5inch) model. All this inkjet talk has made people think in terms of what is currently done with paper (books, newspapers, billboards). Don't forget that they're printing onto silcon substrate. So far there's little to indicate they'll be able to make these screen any larger than they can make LCD screens.
Ok, so the procedure can produce a piece of paper that can act like an LCD screen. This sounds really great, but why didn't they mention it can be used to replace TVs, or even screens.
According to their values quoted (270,000 pixels on a 6.3cm screen) it works out to about 64 pixels per square millimeter. Now that sounds like much better than TV quality, and sounds to me like its Screen quality.
So why haven't they mentioned this ability? What is wrong with the technology that it can be used as a screen for your computer. They mentioned using it in Wireless Internet applications, but never once as a replacement for your TV.
So what did I miss? Either I missed something, or they have really sucky marketing. (People don't care *THAT* much about their cellphones screen quality, but tell them you can make their TV screen as thin as a piece of paper, and much much better technology, and they'll come in the droves if you have the product made).
Its a damn nice product, but I want to know why I can't use it as a replacement for my TV.
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I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
Did you even read the article? It's not "a new technology which allows it to print out a video screen onto paper" at all. It's a new type of video monitor. Sheesh.
I like your law. Just for claiming it as a law, I will begin to spread this meme like the plague. -Dobbs
-Phredrick Dobbs
Emperor of the Universe
Grand and High Protector of Everything
-Phredrick Dobbs
Emperor of the Universe
Grand and High Protector of Everything
Actually, it wasn't lack of research; it was a simple typo.
I meant "year" and typed "week".
In any event, the comment applies the same whether it's last week, yesterday, last month, last year, or anything else; it took a few seconds to search for the most obvious related terms, to determine that this had been discussed numerous times.
The poster should have done that before he submitted.
His submission was still valid, but it would have been worded differently and probably would have included more useful related links.
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But perhaps the most tantalising development on the horizon for LEP technology, says Burroughes, is the possibility of creating video displays for, say, wireless Internet access, that can be rolled up.
This is what I've been waiting for forever. I don't want a laptop, I don't want a palm-pilot - I want a piece of paper I can take out of my pocket and start computing/surfing/etc. I figured I'd have to wait at least 5 years though, so I'm excited.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
On my Mac SE back in the 80's, all I had to do was press command-shift-4 and my fast Imagewriter 2 would print out a picture of the screen.
This sounds very Philip K. to me. He wrote a story about a guy commuting from Mars to Earth, and all the way these direct-to-mind advertisements were ramming themselves into his thoughts. I see myself walking around town and being bombared at all sides by cheap, 40 days life span moving ads. Since the human eye is naturally attracted to motion, you would be constantly bombarded. what I would invent to counteract this is a pair of "sunglasses" that would filter out the light frequency of the LEPs. Call them "non-ad" shades. Protect your eyes. Either that, or the government would make regulations agaisnt garish, moving ads. Oh, and about the people complaining they have to replace their cell phone screen every 41 days... if it cost $.25, who cares? Only the environment.
I wonder what the power usage on something like this? Without a backlit display, I would think the drain would be pretty low. This kind of technology will have huge implications on laptop design. Batteries that can be used for years instead of hours. Our we all run our laptops off of a couple of tripple A's like the Palm. And speaking of Palm. A more affordable color display would seem to follow from this. Nate Baxley
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Even if the flexible, weatherproof substrate is perfected, it would still be a manufacturing process that requires a significant factory, not a special cartridge for your $99 printer that lets it hook up to your sewing machine.
The article also described displays a few inches across with TV resolution, and a 1000 hour usable life. While cool, that technology is a long ways away from what "fudboy" rhapsodized about. What's the inverse of FUD - Glee, Uncertainty, and Premature Raving?
Is it just me, or does anybody see the opportunity here for some seriously hi-res displays. What I'd like to see, personally, is one of these monitors as printed out by an Epson 1440. Think of it, a 1440dpi monitor! X probably couldn't handle it though...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Ok, so as many pointed out, they cannot print displays on paper. But they can print...
So how about this. Cover your wall with aluminium foil, making it conductive. coat a glass plate with aluminium (like high efficiency glass thet i have at home). Print a picture on the glass, completely covering it. Now stick the glass on the wall and apply current. Voila. The whole wall emits light.
Of course, you could use this technology to give road workers light emitting jackets. Nah, that'd be to moralistic.
GCS/MU d- s+: a- C++$ USH++$ P- L+> E W++$ N o-- K- W++@ O-- M- !V PS Y+ PGP- t+ 5(+) X- R tv? b++++ y++(+++)
Duh! What good is pr0n in black-and-white? WE NEED full-color nekkid people. Couple this ad with one seen recently in the Register (www.theregister.co.uk) about pr0n marketers selling to the wireless crowd.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
You're kidding right? They print out a screen onto a silicon substrat. As for resolution, printers run upwords of 1440dpi in some models. Compare that to the 75-100dpi in you monitor.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Field Replacable Units could mean that even the short green lifespan may not matter. If the actual hardware drivers are built into the FRU, then the main appliance (etc.) could survive through multiple upgrades in the LEP technology. If this stuff is as easy to make as they're making it sound, we could be seeing some seriously kick-butt cheap displays in a few years. At that point who really cares how often you have to replace them?
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Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
{shhhhh... the froggies are asleep.}
spam-proofing?
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Now, now, a screen without blue isn't that bad ;)
Actually, I know that from experience - my last screen, (A no-name 14") broke down at some point. For some reason, my screen became an RG one.
Now, fixing it obviously wasn't worth it, but i didn't want to buy a new one yet, and besdies, if i really needed the blue, I could just smack the screen hard, and it would usually get back on for about 5 minutes. But, a large portion of the time , I had just green and red. Ok, now couple that with the fact i'm partially red-green colorblind. But, it was sortof cute, really. Reminded me of those green CGA screens.
Anyway, point is - you can still use the screen after the 1000 hours, if you REALLY want to.
This is an EX-PARROT!
Coupled with "netcasting" and GPS, a cellular or narrowband radio could be used to even SHOW YOU where you are on a map, accurately, and quite visibly. Traffic delays and accidents could come up in realtime as coloured areas to avoid if possible.
Cool! You could even see a MAP VIEW of yourself HAVING AN ACCIDENT in real time!! ;)
I plan to invest in UI research that keeps people's eyes on the road as much as possible while still giving them the information they need...
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
that we need slashdot (of all sites) to be giving us sarky comments about grammer!
-- the most controversial site on the Web
First of all, DON'T USE CAPS SO MUCH, IT PISSES ME OFF.
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.. =) I mean have a bunch of TINY R,G,& B LED's wired all together, when charged the R, G, B, light up accordingly.
Second, let's take a look at your supposedly "Interesting" post point by point...
I don't know very much abount monitors or TV's..
That's obvious.
A conventional monitor uses EXTREAM amounts of light to go through lots of magnets and such to bend the light to hit the monitor/TV in the right places to do different colors, etc...
Did you ever take elementary physics at school? Did they teach you that light can be bent by the kind of magnets you'd find in a TV? If so, take your teacher out back and shoot them. TVs fire electrons at a phosphor-painted screen which produces photons of the appropriate frequency when the electrons give up their energy.
THIS technology would basicly make it so that your monitor could be as thin as a piece of paper and the wires which connect all the dots back to the computer.
Well done. You read the article.
a. How BRIGHT will these monitors be? Would they be viewable in broad sun light or in an office with bright lighting? Or just in the dark?
Since they produce their own light, rather than utilizing reflected light (standard LCDs) or light passing through the substance (backlit LCDs), I presume they'd show up well in the dark, and reasonably well in an indoor setting, but we'll just have to wait for ACTUAL PRODUCTS before finding out, won't we?
b. How FAST can these color dots light up and turn off?? I mean nothing worse than seeing trailers on your mouse when you don't want to. Or you minimize a window but you have to wait for the "dots" to loose their charge
I don't think you're going to be using a mouse (or minimizing windows, for that matter) on your cell phone.
c. How "WELL" do these things respond to electricity? Can you give them a "little" juice and have them light up a little, and MORE JUICE to light up more? Otherwise you taking back to the primary colors for monitors.. back to 8 bit graphics..
ALL color monitors are made up of "primary colors" (actually red, green and blue, ehich are not the traditional primary colors, but oh well...). In addition, if you couldn't vary the luminance (i.e. of the pixels had only two states, "on" and "off") that would be TWO-bit color, not EIGHT.
d. Why couldn't you just do this with conventional LED type things? Like a "Light Bright"
You're a genius! I'm sure this has never occurred to any engineer anywhere ever!
For a start, show me how you're going to make those LEDs so small, how you're going to bring power to them, what substances you're going to use for the various colors, how you're going to avoid black gaps between them........I could go on.
Windows users would find that excessive BSOD occurrences would diminish the practical lifetime of 'monitors' made using this technology by half %^)
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Slán leat agus go n'eirí an bóthar leat
"Seiko's research in Japan shows that a cellphone will only actually get 200 hours use per year"
Well duh, of course that's true because no one uses their phones for anything but phone calls and the occasional wireless web browsing. If you start throwing full motion video and god knows what else into that mix, you can bump that up by a factor of ten... It's no problem that it only lasts for 1000 hours as long as the engineers make the screens easily replaceable (yes I am aware of engineered obsolesence). There is no way I'm going to be willing to buy a new phone every 6 months!
--
Quantum Linux Laboratories - Accelerating Business with Linux
* Education
* Integration
* Support
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
It looks like Epson is on the right track, but is still having trouble with the blue LEDs. If they're concentrating on cell phone displays, they probably have a high cost per unit area. (If they'd cracked that problem, they'd be showing wall-sized TVs.)
Another company making displays by printing is E-ink. Their process is different, and involves tiny balls in fluid moved by electrostatic drivers in the substrate. Writing rates are slow; this is for signs, not TV. The site is heavy on hype; skip the irrelevant Flash animations and go for the data sheet.
This technology has a much wider use for PDAs than cellphones. One of the shortages Palm has been having lately is the LCD screens, which are getting harder and harder to get since it's a painstaking process to create one. A cheap, printed substitue is exactly what Palm needs.
Agreed, the main things that should stick out in the article are:
1) blue only lasts 1000 hours
and
2) no backlight is needed
ok so 1 means that its only real use would be cell phones, pagers, anything that doesn't get used very much or is disposable. Number two means that this technology has an edge above all other technologies mentioned above in that those require some form of illumination, where this produces its own, which is a huge savings in cost.
witty sig goes here
This technology allows you to "print" the screen onto a silicon substrate. *NOT* to paper. The cool thing about this though, is that it can be used for flexible or roll-up-able screens.
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
It won't be long until DoubleClick will be able to change billboards on the fly, depending on the demographic that happens to be in the area...
Browser? I barely know her!
"Seiko / Epson have developed a new technology which allows it to print out a video screen onto paper! This may be the death of paper as we know it" now... If you print it onto PAPER, how would that cause the DEATH of paper? I don't quite get this... and while I can see how you could reuse the same piece of paper, the list continues: -imagine being delivered an electronic video newspaper every morning -Or even delivering your speech as a multimedia piece of paper! -Or having walls and walls of video wallpaper! -Or ending more sentences with exclamation points! <-- well, I put that one because of the sentence under the text box that says "Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! Don't forget the http://!" :-) -DrkShadow
you will see that as well. It's not like there will only be one display technology in "the future". blue LEDs are a short term problem. new & expensive. see blueled.com and Don Klipstein's LED page
...go to the CDT website. It answers all the above questions and more.
I can just see this happening now : People will purchase magazines on this video-paper, then the monthly issues will be wired to them through the net. Next thing you'll know, some script kiddie's gonna be uploading video virii to everyone. Open up that swimsuit issue of SI, and you'll be greeted with nudes of Barbara Walters instead. BRRRRRR!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Last I checked, paper wasn't made out of silicon.
I red the article.
.. Perhaps they'll allow for some degree of flexibility.. it seems that it won't need a normal means of activating pixels, so perhaps that can be made very small as well..
But it didn't say much about the physical state of the "LPD"'s
"And how can this be? For he is the
Interesting... What other uses might a screen like this have?
First off, I expect rapid development of resolution, blue LEP lifespans, modularity, chip embedding, wireless broadband(streaming), and physical properties like flexibility, elasticity, heat and cold resistance, waterproofing, etc.
Ten years after something like this comes to market, it will seem like the blink of an eye, a couple product generations go by and wham! this tech is now ubiquitous and has amazing, undreamed of applications.
One thing people will probably do is wallpaper everything in it: house, car, tennis racket, shoes, shirt, bathing suit area. This technology will also lend itself to vandalism nicely. imagine slapping a 40" square sheet, looping video of pr0n or subversive images on the back of a bus? on the side of a politicians limo? all over a building!
But what to play on these displays? The trippy nebulous winamp plugin style would get old quick. Anything curvy like clothing would distort video, making video look surreal, and making surreal movie footage that much stranger. Looping footage of stars, fire and clouds are likely to be popular. But that still won't be enough. Designers will embrace it, and produce some wonderful combinations of color and tone, but that still won't be enough.
Fairly quick into this, I expect the military to adopt this into cheap and easy mimetic armor systems. This might lead back to consumerville in the form of very sophisticated mood clothing, that matches both your mood and the room you are in. Through practice you could learn to manipulate the clothing to convey subtle accents or advertise a specific mood. this would eventually add another dimension to human interaction. Perhaps a more polite and subtle culture would blossom around this...
There will obviously be styles that come and go, but certain things will remain relatively constant. If displays like this are adopted as the de facto standard for building adornment, there will be a pronounced change in architectural styles, marking the shift in epoch clearly.
Off the top of my head, I imagine buildings would become bland and featureless, possibly made of raw concrete with smooth sections prepared for the display coating.
After a collapse in our civilisation, future generations would think of our's as a hard and ugly era, though in reality everything will be flamboyent to the point of overstimulation and madness!
damn, I should write this stuff down!
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
Although I agree with must you said, especially the 'I don't know very much abount monitors or TV's..: That's obvious.'-part.....
But, well there's always a but...
ALL color monitors are made up of "primary colors" (actually red, green and blue, ehich are not the traditional primary colors, but oh well...). In addition, if you couldn't vary the luminance (i.e. of the pixels had only two states, "on" and "off") that would be TWO-bit color, not EIGHT.
This doesn't make a lot of sense. Two state pixels are ONE-bit. Pixels made from three two state pixels are THREE-bit (ie. 2^3=8 colors).
Johan V.
shut up fool, you'll blow my cover!
I wish it were so, but the keywords in that quote are "on the horizon" and "possibility". Doesn't sound like their quite there yet; however, flexible displays will hopefully not be too far off.
crap,
either a 'club' of these guys, or another 'clever' troll.
can't really be either though, huh?
at least they aren't damn spambots.
-ott
The ammusing part is this guy wasn't talking about screenshots like you'd think... Makes sence for the quote but no...
He refers to "What You See Is What You Get" a wordprocessing feature where the software makes what you see on your screen match what you will eventually get on paper.
He spelled it wrong...
And he seems to confuse WYSIWYG with DeskTop publishing.
Apple backed off from desktop publishing to give Xerox a chance.
In short... he's got a bad habbit of reading of NOT reading byond the headlines...
I don't actually exist.
Especially if the Fantales decided to release the Queens of Pr0n candy, with interactive wrappers...kind of scary actually...
I used to see these in Europe, bubblegum in the Bazooka formfactor with pr0n stickers wrapped up inside. I stuck a whole bunch in the inside of my hat--to make it "softer".
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Are these things recyclable, or at least break-downable? At 1000h, I can see lots of these things getting tossed and stocking up landfills...
Or would you be able to feed the sheets back into a printer and reprint the blue "ink"?
Your Working Boy,
Um, Yes.
/. article, not the linked article), the poster thought that the concept of "electronic paper", so to speak, was the new technology. It is not. I provided links to stories about this technology. Yes, there are different implementations. Yes, the colors are a new thing. Yes, applying the polymer with an inkjet-like technology is neat. But that's beside the point.
/. article differently, yay for you. Just goes to show how interpretation makes a difference.
The way I read the article (the
Now, if you read the
Next time, you might want to be a little more tactful. You might be taken more seriously.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Everything besides the speech recongnition sounds right on the money. Probably more realistic would be a pen-and-paper like interface. Point and draw, select from menus and checkboxes, hopefully without a "windowing" interface (everything fullscreen) with forward and back buttons.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Blue lasers and LEDs are fairly recent technology. 3 years ago, they were lucky to get a few seconds in the blue spectrum, and now blue lasers are practically as common as others. It should be expected that the life time of blue LEPs will increase exponentially over the next 2 yrs, just as the laser and LED lifetimes have done.
But perhaps the most tantalising development on the horizon for LEP technology, says Burroughes, is the possibility of creating video displays for, say, wireless Internet access, that can be rolled up.
I had a Newton 2100 at one point, but the damn thing was just too big to carry around... so I never used it for what it was really intended for. Palms are smaller, yes, but I'm worried that I'll break them... so, I got a paper planner that's just a calendar -- it fits in my back pocket. Since it spends most of its time in my back pocket, it's shaped nicely to my ass. I tell my friends that I'm waiting for a Palm that will shape to my ass before I buy one. Flexible screens! That's the way to do it...
- Tony
// No comment
Oh get real. Now you're saying the technology is 'neat', but in your original post you downplayed it with sarcasm:
Oooh, it's color. I bet that's just a *huge* accomplishment.
Part of your first statement also alludes to the fact that you had no idea what you were talking about:
Develop the technology in black, then change it to RGB and overlay them.
WRONG. You were still believing that the technology you were referring to was the same as the technology that was just posted. They're not overlaying anything. The technology isn't starting out as black. This is NOT the MicroBall technology. It's a totally DIFFERENT technology that wasn't originally developed in black, wasn't changed to RGB, and was not overlayed. Your facts are incorrect and you're trying to throw your mistake on me.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
This gives the PrntScrn key a whole new meaning ;)
If you really want to know about the light emitting polymer go here to CDT's (the people who are developing the product) website.
For another article (related, with interesting technical specs) try here
Incidentally, the specs on this page show that its luminosity (max) is about the same of a TFT display.
{shhhhh... the froggies are asleep.}
spam-proofing?
.................................................
Polarized lenses allow light to go through them in one direction but not the other. To avoid degradation in sunlight, why aren't such lenses used to shield the LEPs, especially the lower-lifed blue ones? I can imagine that viewing angle might be compromised? I have never played with them, I am curious if anyone knows about this.
this has been about for at least a year now, and green for a couple of years. heres an artical from december 98 Cambridge claims blue light emitting polymer and heres a good one from feb 98 it clames that Seiko-Epson and Cambridge Display Technology were working on a momocrome version.
want to find out more .
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Human skin has a mild charge... so, howsabout we print directly on that? In SoCal clothes become obsolete... Just think what you could do in tatoos, too... mmm... the ultimate in bio-feedback devices...
In mathematics, one does not understand things, one merely gets used to them.
--VonNeumann
Who have a press release here
No one said anything about creating a display on a sheet of paper, or even if the substrate was flexible (which would be a most iteresting feature).
The article says:
"But perhaps the most tantalising development on the horizon for LEP technology, says Burroughes, is the possibility of creating video displays for, say, wireless Internet access, that can be rolled up."
This appears to indicate that the substrate at least can be flexible.
Yeah, I caught that after going back to check my post. Grrr... brain fart.
Negroponte and Joe Jacobsen talk about how paper is here to stay as an electronic display. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.01/negroponte .html
LEP = Light Emitting Polymers
I would say that they do indeed emit light, rather than merely reflecting it.
OK, I took a look at the article, but I don't see how this is going to be the "death of paper as we know it". This looks more like monitor technology.
Do you really think that this will replace your speeches? I can't see the refresh on this being very good - I think I'll stick with going in front of an audience. But that's just me...
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
It actually uses a polymer that emits light when voltage is applied to it. By coloring the polymer red, green, and blue, and spraying it on a base with an opposing charge, you have a color display. It's a solid-state deal.
Close, but not really. These things aren't like christmas tree bulbs that are really white and just painted. They develop different polymers that actually emit blue light. Since blue is so high on the spectrum, it's sorta hard to find something that will emit low enough blue that you can see it. That's why it was such a big deal when they came out with blue LEDs a few years ago. if you look at a blue LED when it's off, it's clear, not blue. same with green. That's also why the blue has such a short life-span. Red is low freq. so you can power them for years. green takes more power. blue takes even more.
-Superb0wl
-Superb0wl
It's not that I'm lazy....it's that I just don't care.
I've heard of very typical solutions for printing replacements.. webpad devices which clone the "newspaper" device written of in arthur c. clarke's book 2010.. So I'm guessing as a printer you'd "print out" a screen, and then connect a eeprom chip to it that has your content stored? I wonder if these could be expanded in size.. say to the size of a newspaper or a billboard?
.. and then have a glamour shot-video of you running?
Just to think.. a screen on your t-shirt that you can say "hey baby.. I read slashdot and I'm single.. yeah ok maybe i'm ugly but i'm 50% vested"
this could be great for the whole wearable computing crowd..
"And how can this be? For he is the
So, it's an ink... How about a tattoo made from this stuff? You'd have to charge it somehow, sure - but it seems like it's a possiblity.
Education is the silver bullet.
"CDT claims the red, green and blue LEPs in its new display are the first to have lifetimes long enough for use in consumer products. CDT's red LEP will work for 100 000 hours, green for 30 000 hours and blue for 1000 hours."
1000 hours? that's only 40 days of color.....
"Seiko's research in Japan shows that a cellphone will only actually get 200 hours use per year," says Burroughes. "People replace their mobiles well before the current blue polymer lifetime of 1000 hours is reached."
Umm... Mine's been on since I got it new... 3 mths already... (that would be 2 1/2 screens already!)
-------------------- Hmmm... what does this button d
eInk is a Xerox PARC spin off using the electronic ink technology developed there.
In addition to self-driving signs it can be used for passive "electronic paper". Basicly a sheet that is printed on magneticly and can be resused. So, for instance, for your electronicly delivered news-sheet you can re-use the same sheet of "paper" every day.-
Remember to 3d postcards?
The ones with the ribbed plastic surface so the picture on the card looks like it has 3 dimensions.
Would be cool if you'd put that on these paper monitors. You could for instance create cool 3d catalogues, 1000 hours should be plenty for that purpose - if lifetime of this technology was to be the bottleneck.
You can also create very cool cheatingmethods with this stuff, just put a little on the side of a pencil upload the data you need and scroll it while you make your tests.
Or put some on the inside of glasses, with a little lens in front so you can look from closeby so you have you own private heads-up display maybe mount a tiny cam and link some together so you can look at the stuff someone else is writing without having to stretch yourself.
Btw anyone knows if there's a place where you can buy these ribbed plastic sheets so you can make your own 3d-viewable printouts, or maybe the name for this oldstyle 3d-tech?
Regards,
If this proves truly inexpensive, it should make for some really great gimicky watches! I can't wait!!1!!!!1 :)
---
I am the dot in slashdot.org
If you've figured it out, can you share it with the rest of us?
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
>If they can actually print and address dots in that high a density, why couldn't they only use one dot in four, swapping them out as they wear out?
This doesn't work. the LEPs degrade when exposed to light. use isn't the problem.
From the article:
Until now, a major problem with semiconducting polymers has been that they oxidise and become discoloured when exposed to light.
On the individual side, the idea of a flatscreen TV hanging on the wall may become a reality far sooner now. And, if the technology is truly as "cheap" as they say it is, the I'd like to see embedded displays in car dashboards, or as a "heads up" display on an unused portion of the windshield. Volume controls on the dashboard may be replaced with control buttons for map displays.
Coupled with "netcasting" and GPS, a cellular or narrowband radio could be used to even SHOW YOU where you are on a map, accurately, and quite visibly. Traffic delays and accidents could come up in realtime as coloured areas to avoid if possible.
Hell, the possibilities of this are pretty much endless, so I'll stop here.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
You do realize that's 100 dots per INCH, right? Not total resolution! 100 dots per inch works out to a res of around 1600x1200 on a 19" monitor.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It looks interesting.
I wonder how it might work in combination with Jim Willard's paper computer that was discussed here back in December.
From memory the paper computer thing didn't offer any serious visual feedback, but combined the whole thing might be quite cool.
I guess processing power might be a problem, but maybe if people started carrying around portable processors to plug their paper into it could.. okay I've almost lost it, but maybe. :)
===
Nah, that's not a showstopper. After all, laptops have been getting 2 to 9 hours of autonomous use and people are happy with it. All you have to do is provide screen covers and tell the implementors to not use too much blue in their graphics. That's not a problem.
Alternatively, you might sell it cheap enough to let people replace them often -- replacing your screen could become just as run-of-the-mill as replacing or charging a battery.
It's just a marketing issue. Eventually, the technology will have caught up and the replacements become less and less frequent.
They didn't make it easy to find this info last time I checked, but I recall that the refresh rate seemed too slow for anything video.
The blue LEP only has a life span of 1000hrs however the manufactors believe that this is long enough as most mobile phones only have their displays used for 200hrs.
The problem is that is todays mobile phones. How useful is this going to be when mobiles are started to be used in a big way for WAP and calendering. I know my palm has had alot more than 1000hrs of use and I see my future phone largly replacing my palm.
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
c. How "WELL" do these things respond to electricity? Can you give them a "little" juice and have them light up a little, and MORE JUICE to light up more?
If not, you could always excite them with a variable-width pulse, or print them in sections and turn on variable numbers of sections.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What your refering to Xerox did first. DeskTop publishing.
But on the side.. accually "What You See Is What You Get" WYSIWYG is just what you see on the screen is what you'll get on the priniter. This didn't take a laser printer. Just a computer with a bit more than a text only display and a wordprocessor that takes advantage of that.
Desktop publishing being a great deal more than simply making "what you see" the same as "what you get".. It's also producing newsprint type results instead of just something that came off a typowriter.
None of this is really about transfering whats on the screen to paper but about making whats on the screen match what you'll eventually get on paper.
(printing out test pages is a bastard... so it's great when it's not nessisary).
I have seen a "video printer" and that seems closer to what is being discribed in your quote...
But on reading the artical it seems more to the truth just a new lowcost flatscreen.
Not related to WYSIWYG at all...
I don't actually exist.
I mean, if this is based on printer technology, will we only be getting 12-16 frames per minute ;-) What happens when the batteries run out? Will the user have to prime and reset the thing?
-----------------------------------------
Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
I thought that this looked a bit dodgy...
But now that I can get Asuka on my mobile, all the problems of the world can go away.
Anyone know what to do with a SCSI drive that sounds like a 747 when spinning up.
--
Laptop006 (RHCE: That means I know what I'm talking about! When talking about linux at least...)
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
It will be all screen with an area the size of an A4 piece of paper and be perhaps ½" thick.
It will run on a hydrogen fueled power cell and require, at most, monthly refills.
It will have enough CPU power and local solid-state storage to be capable of using speech recognition as the primary interface. This will work flawlessly for any user in any language in realtime without any training.
It will have minimal latency broadband access that will work worldwide.
It will have total access to every motion picture, piece of music or book ever created weather it be past, present or in the future for free.
Lastly it will have an open source OS and an unlimited supply of free application software.
Ideal toy hu? I'll be buying one next year!!
Of course, Microsoft might volunteer to release its source code and the RIAA might go easy on Napster. You never know....
Then again maybe not. At least the screen part of my ideal device seems a bit closer!
BTW, you misspelled "grammar".
:)
That said, I think it's time I changed my
In my sleep deprived stupor, I thought that they spent millions of $$ to invent the "Print Screen" button. Then I realized what they were talking about.....I think it's time to crash....
um, /.ers apparently are, cause they can't sell this and I hope they don't because that low MTBF is just a giant pain for everybody that helps no one.
A. I keep my phone powered ALL the time. It stays powered while it charges at night.
B. While its powered on, it has lots of little writing and stuff on it.
This is a common-as-dirt Nokia 5160.
This is a premature hyping of something.
The MTBF is a SHOWSTOPPER.
I only hope the people who want to sell this aren't as worked up about as a lot of us
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
Um, excuse me, but I think Apple invinted this back in the early 80s. Its called a laser printer and WSYWIG. =-)
Size of an idividual display doesn't matter, if
it's cheap you can build a array of tiny screens.
Also, with this kind of technology, there probably
won't be inactive margins preventing
a perfect array of small screens, a problem with
LCDs.
Being able to print out a screen sounds great, but where will we really see this technology applied first? My guess is the technology will be used heavly for marketing. You have seen first hand what they have done with banner ads. Imagine the power to make dynamic banners and hang them on walls at stores. At least you can filter banner ads on sites. Guess I will be doing more web shopping.
> So I'm guessing as a printer you'd "print out" a screen
Please, don't guess, read the article. This is not about printing anything, it's just about a new technology of making color displays cheap.
It uses Light Emitting Polymer instead of LCD or LEDs, but the result is still a display as we know it. That it uses a printing technology in manufacturing the display does not change any of this.
It could make color displays on cell phones cheaper, though.
NT
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This means we are going to have living, breathing mail carriers delivering e-mail!
That alredy exists. It's called "printer". It uses ink.
Now I'll go read the article.
--
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
That the phone is on does not mean that the display has to be on, especially if it's designed used such a limited life laterial. Only when you're actively calling, or using some other function does the screen need to be showinf stuff.
Why you need a RGB screen on you cell phone is of course quite unclear to me...
sorry to shout, but has anyone posting here other than Lionfire actually read the article properly? This technology is not about having video screens on paper (how would that work?). It's just about using a similar process to inkjet printing for making flat-panel displays. Sure, the headline is misleading, but please - can we all stop, read, post?
--
The headline makes sense if the story was about Xerox Parc's or E-Ink's electronic paper...
This sort of video-paper tech and video-enabled clothing has been promised for several years now and hopefully will be delivered very soon. But, frankly, I'm bored with the idea -- it just makes one more piece of stuff that I have to carry around with me. How about using technology like this to create tattooes that will display video? I would think that the tech for doing it would essentially be the same -- this video-paper tech uses ink-jet printer technology, so why not "print" circuits just under the skin? I would never wear clothing again. I would probably have pr0n MPGs running 24/7 in wide-screen format across my backside...
>The ultimate solid state IT device... You are easy to please. Diamond Age's mediatronic paper is what you need.
Censorship on Slashdot
http://www.papercomputer.com/
-Erik
Nothing new about this. Oooh, it's color. I bet that's just a *huge* accomplishment. Develop the technology in black, then change it to RGB and overlay them.
If I remember correctly, some researchers at MIT developed "digital ink" at least a couple years ago. Basically, a flexible thin display that you controlled in a similar fashion to an LCD screen.
Hey look, here's a link to a story on ScienceNews about it.
And look, it's the research papers from the IBM guys working on it!
Wow, and here's a Company that's developing electronic ink
Guess it's not such a new idea after all.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Umm... if you read the article carefully, you'll find that they're not "printing onto paper" -- just using ink-jet technology to deposit the PPV polymer onto a silicon substrate.
No one said anything about creating a display on a sheet of paper, or even if the substrate was flexible (which would be a most iteresting feature).
-My homework crashed.
-----
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
Well, it makes sense..
.. And they have it working in RED BLUE AND GREEN...
.. A conventional monitor uses EXTREAM amounts of light to go through lots of magnets and such to bend the light to hit the monitor/TV in the right places to do different colors, etc...
...
...
.. =) I mean have a bunch of TINY R,G,& B LED's wired all together, when charged the R, G, B, light up accordingly.
They found an "INK" that when it is charged with electricity it "LIGHTS UP"
I don't know very much abount monitors or TV's.. but I know a little bit
THIS technology would basicly make it so that your monitor could be as thin as a piece of paper and the wires which connect all the dots back to the computer.
I don't know.. sounds a bit FISHY to me. I mean, it should work.. but a few questions raise to my head... like
a. How BRIGHT will these monitors be? Would they be viewable in broad sun light or in an office with bright lighting? Or just in the dark?
b. How FAST can these color dots light up and turn off?? I mean nothing worse than seeing trailers on your mouse when you don't want to. Or you minimize a window but you have to wait for the "dots" to loose their charge
c. How "WELL" do these things respond to electricity? Can you give them a "little" juice and have them light up a little, and MORE JUICE to light up more? Otherwise you taking back to the primary colors for monitors.. back to 8 bit
graphics..
d. Why couldn't you just do this with conventional LED type things? Like a "Light Bright"
ANYWAYS... Try it before you buy it.. and when you do buy it, check the warrenty and keep the receipt under lock and key..
Imagine if you printed a video screen onto those!
Collect the lot to view the entire Star Wars Episode 1 : The Phantom Menace movie or whatever ... :-)