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.

Comments

These are coming sooner than you think

[dfeldman]

One of my buddies works at a competing manufacturer and has some very promising news about these displays. Although I'm not sure what the case is for the Philips units, production and deployment of his company's product is scheduled to be ramped up in February, with consumer products hitting the market around March 15th. Some of the tidbits that he leaked to me were:

• The baseline, mass market model will have a resolution of 64dpi and cost roughly $0.50 per square inch for displays between 6 and 24 square inches. This includes the circuitry required to interface to an 8051 or other mpu.
  
• A serial interface (ideal for connecting to a PC or BASIC stamp) will be offered around September 2002.
  
• Resolutions of 128dpi and 256dpi will be available, albeit at a substantially increased cost.
  
• These units take about 0.003 uA/pixel, which is substantially less than current LCD and OLCD offerings.
  
• Work is being done to make the drivers' jobs easier. For instance, advances have been made that allow the driver to get away with only refreshing static data once every 3.5 seconds.
  

df

Re:when.. who.. what

[SonCorn]

Actually this has already been implemented. This article at Scentific American Magazine from the November 2001 issue describes in detail where the technology is and how it is currently being used. P.S. I know that it is an IP address, but that is what Scientific american sends you to. If you want goto Scientific American's homepage and search for electronic paper. The first result is the article linked to above.

I can't wait

[abe ferlman]

Finally, books can be printed on a medium that respects the rights of authors! Once your reading license has expired, the pages will simply erase themselves. And a retinal scan can even be sure that no unauthorized readers get access to your prose!

A new day is dawning for innovation, and the promise of the copyright system to encourage the creation of new works and the protection of the exclusive right of the rich to actually read anything that's ever been written is finally being fulfilled.

I know I'm not alone when I say "It's about time! Thanks, Phillips!"

e paper's achille's heel? = backplane electronics

[Anonymous Chemist]

as a papermaker, I have seen all of the approaches to epaper. Most recently these were presented at NIP 18 (Intnl Conf Nonimpact Printing) in Ft Lauderdale. The main problem would seem to be the approaches ALL require backplane electronics to make the stuff work. Therefore you induce a charge to get proper sphere alignment, once acheived until a new charge is induced they aintain their orientation.
So, don't charge out and invest in e paper; as right now the berst application is point of purchase displays. An interesting concept, but the economics are not there yet, except for perhaps specialty applications. Once they can make dirt cheap backplanes by printing them, then perhaps it can make inroads on paper. However, don't hold your breath. Wonder if an informed reply will bet a better score?

This again?

[Bi()hazard]

We might be tired of hearing about this stuff...but book and magazine publishers won't be. They can't wait to set up a digital rights management sytem that will allow them to force restrictive licenses on users.

History shows that digital rights management only applies to the right to profit-it has nothing to do with consumers rights. Losing the ability to do whatever you want, short of commercial republication, with your purchases will nullify many of the benefits oof digital paper. When I buy a book or newspaper, I like to know that I've actually bought it rather than licensed it for some term, and that I will always have the ability to read it whenever I desire. Anyone who believes that when electronic paper is available publishers will play by the same rules they have no choice but to follow now is naive.

Keep in mind that copy protection won't be too hard to enforce for books and magazines that choose to keep up physical distribution lines. How many people did you see pirating N64 games? Hardly anyone has the ability to write to a cartridge, so if these papers took their input from a cartridge piracy would not be easy. Companies wouldn't need to reduce our rights-but rest assured, they will anyway, I'm just pointing out why any moves on their part will necessarily be due to impure motives.

On the other hand, there are tradeoffs for the rest of the world. Even with all the recycling of paper (and most of it still gets thrown out), trees still need to get cut, and paper has a limit to how many times it can be recycled (eventually the fibres break down). Not to mention the fact that rather nasty chemicals are used in its production, have you ever smelled the air around a paper plant?. Digital paper will last far longer and one sheet can display a variety of content; this will dramatically reduce the usage of wood based paper. Expect to see environmentalists and civil rights advocates at each others' throats over this issue.

Who, me?

[FFFish]

"Cheatsheet? Er, no, ma'am -- look, it's blank paper..."

hmmm...

[axioein]

Immagine the paper airplane I could make out of tihs.... It would be the most hi-tech paper plane... It could have an inflight video!

Re:256 grey shades of gray?

[scorcherer]

The next thing they'll 'innovate' is a whiter shade of pale.