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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!
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..."
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
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.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø`ø,,ø`ø
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
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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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?
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.
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
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.
First of all, DON'T USE CAPS SO MUCH, IT PISSES ME OFF.
...
.. =) 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.
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
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.
Who have a press release here
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.
Um, excuse me, but I think Apple invinted this back in the early 80s. Its called a laser printer and WSYWIG. =-)
I should imagine these quoted lifetimes are for active pixels, otherwise they might die in the warehouse before they ever get to you. Your phone display will be blank, or the phone powered off for the vast bulk of the time.
:)
My imagination also foretells an awful lot or red, green and brown menus and other on-screen display with these phones
-Andy
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
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"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.
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"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..