Slashdot Mirror
Philips Improves Electronic Paper
Remco writes: "BBC News ) has a story about Philips apparently improving the quality of electronic paper. What they've done is instead of using sillicon, they've discovered a polymer for use in electronic paper. This makes it cheaper to produce and has the added bonus of providing 256 grey shades of gray." Philips has been working on flexible displays for a while as well as research on using plastic instead of silicon. here's an article we posted before about OLEDs, another one of the promising leads toward thin, low-power, cheap-to-make displays.
Please see Thursday's article.
In the newspaper industry, you can hear the nervous talk about e-paper. The only real barrier to entry in publishing a paper is either access to a press or owning one, and for a daily paper you basically need to own your own press. The other pieces involved in making a newspaper cost next to nothing compared to the press, ink, paper, film, plates, typesetters, benders, and employing skilled pressmen. Journalists, pre-press staff, workstations, DTP software, wire feeds, photo development (digital now), etc. are all widely available and don't take millions in capital or the help of a vendor or consultant to put in place. The high cost of owning and running a press is what keeps competition between newspapers limited to the paper(s) owned by the city's local plutocrats, papers from media conglomerates (USA Today, Tribune-owned papers, etc.) and the local weeklies that earn their living criticizing the mistakes of first two. The local weeklies usually rent the use of a commercial press, which is why they're stuck coming out only once a week. The cost of starting your own paper is so high, they say you're better off to just bury your millions in your back yard and wait to see it goes up in value. It can be done, but it's a very expensive business to try to start from scratch.
Once you've got e-paper, all that is gone. Newspaper publication becomes no more expensive than web site publication, and may actually be cheaper as you may not have the "slashdot penalty", depending on how you offer your epaper over the internet: micropayments, free, suscriber only, etc.
- Newspapers can be distributed by a vending machine equipped with USB, irDA, 802.11, maybe bluetooth, maybe a CompactFlash card writer. Pay via your cell-phone, magnetic card swipe, or plain old coins.
- The vending machine will be the barrier to entry, i.e. the equivelent of owning a press. Consequently, the rich will try their best to corner all the vending machines, especially in airports, schools, and restaurants.
- However, someone will figure out they can make more money with less risk if they just charge a commision on each paper sold and then just offer more titles to choose from (out-of-town newspapers, typical newstand magazines, snap-shots of popular web sites, e-text novels, indy and alternative papers, adult material, mail-order catalogs, maybe interactive games or puzzles).
- The idea that each e-paper reader will only hold 1 title is just stupid. The free market will tear that fantasy to shreds. To just read 60-80 dpi grayscale books, the guts of a PDA from 2 or 3 years ago would be enough to hold a week or two of issues and a half-dozen full-length novels and still be cheap. It might also double as a PDA, especially if they power consumption is better and you can fold it up to fit your pockets. The media outlets will give away crappy ones, but the aftermarket and PDA vendors will take it from there, offering models that give you more freedom (more storage, ports) for just a little more money.
- DRM is going to vary. Big media outlets will definately use it, but your indy papers may let it go, and some pubs may deliberately shun including DRM in their issues as a nod to their customers. FE, if Project Gutenberg or Ibiblio can get in the game, it's reasonably certain those docs won't expire on you. You're probably going to see what's already happened with DVD players and region encoding. DMCA or not, word will get out which models can be made to bypass the DRM. The black market will not let this slide by them.
Personally, I'm more interested in when they will develop table-top displays with biometrics. Imagine an epaper screen covering the entire dining table that can distinguish between finger taps, a stylus, and irrelevant pressure to ignore, like a coffee cup or elbows set on the table. A little handwriting recognition, a PC rackmounted underneath, and you've got a nice desk to work on (or play StarCraft...).
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