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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!
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.
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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.
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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.
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
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. =-)
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..