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LCD Screens Almost Paper-thin
DarklordSatin writes "Nature.com has an article up about new LCDs that are thin enough to roll up and can display black and white at 96 dpi. More coverage by Wired and Scientific American. Thanks go to Arstechnica for the heads up." Wow. Let the speculation for new uses begin! Update: 05/10 14:59 GMT by CN : Whoops, this is really a dupe of an older story that slipped through because I only searched for LCDs. Ah well, it's still cool.
What is the primary appliance for this device?
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
Are going to be destroyed every day for newspapers?
Save the Electronic Rainforest!
Not a flame here, but I would rther see the price of LCD screens go down than their size.
One can only imagine the bragging rights you'd have smoking a 32-bit True Color blunt...
Let the speculation for new uses begin!
I always wanted to wallpaper my house with something that I could change at a flick of a swich.
At night it would turn into little moons and stars.
In the morning it would reflect what the weather is like.
During the day I could watch tv or browse the web on any wall in the house.
Or even implant cameras in the other rooms so it would look like you have see through walls.
Ah well back to the reals world.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Dynamic Wallpaper. And not the kind on your computer desktop either.
Imagine being surrounded by thousands of ever-changing images of Bettie Page all the time.
mmmm
Now I'll have to wear my glasses when I go to the can or I might accidently wipe my arse with my LCD display.
Trolling is a art,
At a refresh rate of 4Hz, it's not much use as a monitor, I think they currently use this stuff for signage displays and the like. It might be useful for a e-book sort of thing, where it's unlikely you'll be reading faster than four pages a second.
The big question is how much does it cost and how durable/stable is it?
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
"Let the speculation for new uses begin!"
Isn't the first use for every new technology a new way of accessing, displaying or making pr0n?
Read reviews of shopping cart software
And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin screen.
</french accent>
A quick glance at the linked article would be sufficient to figure out they're not LCD. I'd be very surprised if they made LCD displays that could be rolled like that!
Maybe it's just me, but I've been visiting slashdot for 3+ years now, and I keep seeing articles about new, paper thing, cheap displays that will revolutionize everything, and really small, cheap, huge(storage capacity), solid state storage devices.
I look forward to new stuff as much as anyone, but in those 3 years, hard drive storage and monitors keep making slower (in comparison to what is mentioned in articles such as these), but steady process.
I no longer trust articles saying 'everything will be different in a year.' From my experience, it won't be different and revolutionary, it will just be slightly better.
Walls covered with these displays on the inside that can display anything. No need for windows, just make the displays show what's outside. The appearance of glass walls without the privacy issues. The only thing missing will be natural sunlight and opening a window for a breeze. But you can make any s**thole apartment seem to be a cabin in the woods, or beachfront property, or floating 150 miles above the planet's surface.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Similar technology could even make clothes that double as video screens
New! Look bigger in jeans!
Slim screen can be rolled but not folded
Ultra-thin display brings e-newspapers a step closer.
8 May 2003
MICHAEL HOPKIN
One newspaper that updates itself with the latest headlines every day - that's the vision of US researchers who have unveiled an ultra-thin electronic-ink display screen1.
The screen is less than 0.3 millimetres thick, flexible enough to be rolled into a tube just 4 mm across and can be viewed from almost any angle.
This is good, but not quite good enough for an e-newspaper, admits one of the device's creators, Yu Chen of the E Ink Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts: the display is still too thick to be folded in two.
The screen uses an electronic network called a thin-film transistor array. This can supply opposing voltages to different areas of the display. On top of the array is a conducting layer containing millions of tiny capsules of charge-sensitive pigment - some black, some white.
A negative voltage moves the white particles to the surface; a positive one brings black ones to the fore, creating an effect like print on a page. The pattern remains for around 10 minutes after the voltages are removed, making this a cheaper alternative to other electronic displays.
Similar technology could even make clothes that double as video screens. This would need a display that refreshed itself every 15 milliseconds. The new screen currently takes around a quarter of a second. "The main challenge is to increase the speed - I think it's very doable," Chen says
What use? PORN offcourse, what else?
Predator (not the UAV) here we come! This could be used to create a display that could be worn as shirt/pants (as mentioned in the article) along with the technology used in the upcoming Matrix film (Burly Brawl scene) to render the current scene on the clothes, albiet a static scene. Upcoming super accurate GPS technologies such as the military's DAGR could be used for the positioning. Invisibility is around the corner.
We know we're finally in an information age when we can start leaving technology in the bathroom...
This would be so cool on a door mat. Set up a CCTV system that scanned a person's face when they rang your doorbell. If they're a friend the doormat LCD says "Welcome!". If it's a pair of guys in white shirts with ties and name tags then the doormat displays "Bug off!"
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Sure, you can't fold it, but you could roll it up in to a 1" tube that contains batteries, communications, etc. Carry a 1-foot long 1" diameter tube that rolls out into a 19" screen. And it could be much smaller if you wanted.
This would be perfect for "paperback" e-books. Even with the quarter-second refresh time on the screen it would acceptable for "turning the page". Or you could produce a book of the screens, and have the pages fill in with whatever you are reading.
How about electronic blueprints? Dynamic wall art that you can move around easily? Status displays on pillars in the airport?
If they can reduce the refresh time it would be incredible. Imagine a roll-up 19" screen for crowded server closets.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
This would need a display that refreshed itself every 15 milliseconds. The new screen currently takes around a quarter of a second.
The best use I can think of is to give these out to all my competitors at the next LAN party. Then I will reign supreme despite my limited skillz and total lack of eye-hand coordination.
Off topic? I beg to differ.
/poorboy.
This tech has huge potential to change the way we use media. Currently, you can subscribe to an "online" edition of your daily news paper, but people don't because they like to have A Paper to read. But Imagine if you could buy the media once, then have a daily update downloaded to your e-Paper each morning. Think how many Real Trees could that save on a larger scale.
That's just one application, same applies to magazines, and texts as well. No more obsolete classroom books - just buy and download the update from the publisher. Getting the best of both the electronic and old-skool media worlds has loads of benefits. Saving trees may be one of them.
This is a Good Thing.
I am a musician (pianist) ... Currently I play at a church and for each service, I have to pull music from 5 different books + sheet music, etc..etc..
..
.. given the way I play the piano (music laying flat on top of the piano), it could possibly make it look like I memorized all the music to the congregation :-)
....
Needless to say, first, its a pain to carry around those books with me, flipping through them during a service, finding particular songs, etc...
So back in 1999 when I bought my Visor Deluxe PDA, I thought it would be cool to scan in all of that sheet music and have the PDA hooked up to some e-paper sheets (probably two of them) and then use a foot switch to "turn the pages"
The setup would be very cool, small and portable. Before a service, I'd simply download the lineup into the system and everything would be ready to go. No carrying around the books, no page flipping, etc.. Heck
Of course, I heard about e-paper back then as well.. and so far, no products.. so by the time it *IS* released, i might already use something like a tablet PC
This is a dupe of a recent story. At least the articles it points to are different. Same product, though.
-Mani
I hope they add an alpha channel to those!
The two goals, which in my mind are separate directions, are speed and independence from wires.
If I can 'print' an e-book, I don't care about refresh rate. But is a 300-page e-paperback cheaper than buying, say 50 paperbacks? 20 paperbacks? Or is it silly to even think of having 300 pages of this stuff, and I'd just 'leaf' through pages like I do on my PDA currently? Maybe I'm old, but I still like the page-flipping aspect of books, especially if I want to flip back to find when a character that just stepped out of the wings first showed up.
If this stuff is as durable, and as cheap, power-friendly and fast as LCDs, I'd be happy to drop a fair chunk of my PDA's weight. Cell-phone screens sound like another perfect application.
Now for the more far-out stuff:
How about rewritable MTG cards?
Medical 'patches' that tell you when they need replacing, or can monitor glucose or other body functions.
Devices when you need to measure bend
Design for Use, not Construction!
From the article:
:)
The screen is less than 0.3 millimetres thick, flexible enough to be rolled into a tube just 4 mm across and can be viewed from almost any angle.
So the thickness can be given as 0.3 mm with any accuracy.
Googling for toilet paper thickness, single ply is about 0.004 inches thick, and with a conversion of 25.4mm to an inch, you get 0.010mm thickness, for a grand total of 30 times the thickness of toilet paper (minus quilting).
Also, the screens are black and white, raising and lowering white and black dots, so there is no backlighting necessary. So you just need the controller width plus enough room to move the dots.
Put some effort into your trolls
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Im still waiting for my flying car and my trip to the moon (3rd class). They cant buy time with a small flexible screen, not for me, no sir.
Sigs are for morons... Wait a minute...
what about placemats at a table for food, or something like that? If a protective coating is supplied underneath, kids (and even adults) could play games, read the news, and even see advertising all at the same time. It could also introduce a much easier way to pay bills.
Here is what the display is made of... And here is the last ./ story. Come on guys! Don't get my hopes up like that!
As a side note, I was at Epcot and got to see Xerox's Gyricon (now marketed as 'SmartPaper') up close and personal. The only issue was that the person at the booth barely knew how the stuff worked and did not have so much as a magnet to show it change. Someday...
I would say one of the real problems with online newspapers is that people would rather read something on paper then on a computer screen, I know I would. This might be a bit more like regular paper in that respect, although I would have to see it to say for sure.
Are you sure this is an LCD?
Although I don't know many of the specifics, it sounds a lot like an OLED display. UDC has been working on this for quite some time.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
Instead of painting a wall, you could just place paper thin LCD on it, use the wall as a TV or whatever floats your boat. I'd patent the idea but im a poor boy in a rich mans world.
Gnome wasnt built in a day.
Ive seen a few people talk about using it to replace a windows. I think you could liken it more to a poster. Remember its not like youll see the image in 3D.
Take it up with the Slashdot editors. I'm pointing out their idiocy, which, in this case, is well deserved. Why are you defending them?
The point of these displays (as stated in the article) is to create a one-page newspaper. They can currently roll it up pretty well, but it can't be folded. What I want to know is why you would fold it.
If it's a one-page newspaper, you've only got one page. It can be the size of an 8.5x11 piece of paper. It's an entirely different presentation medium and they're still thinking in terms of traditional papers. The biggest failure of the traditional newspaper (as an interface) is that you have to do all the folding and whatnot. Most papers can't be held with one hand without folding them up a bit. It's a hassle, plain and simple.
If you've got one sheet of electronic paper, of a reasonable size, you can hold it in one hand and just read it.
I can see how folding would be useful for storing the paper, but I don't see that as a critical issue.
in that iLoo (or whatever the hell that portapottie with connection to the net was called). cruise the net, look at pr0n and then fold it up and wipe your ass.
Well they would be more like terminals at that point, wireless so you can access your data from anywhere, on any unit you happen find laying around, like a sticky pad.
And be so cheap, that if you loose it.. no big deal.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"I've HAD IT."
Then leave. Seriously. Understand the fact that the reason there may be a lack of "journalistic integrity", as you call it, is because they aren't journalists. Relaying news does not make you a journalist just as telling you what the weather is like doesn't make you a meterologist.
Besides, I don't think you've "HAD IT". The fact that you responded to your post because of some moderation proves that not only have you not "HAD IT", but you stick around and reload over-and-over again just to see if your comments get responded to or moderated. Get a fucking life. Sitting here and pointing out mistakes, as they are bound to appear on this site, no matter who the editors are, is useless.
I've invented a paper-thin material than can support an INFINITE number of dots per inch! It's dirt cheap and uses exisiting technology!
Oh wait, that's just some paper I had lying around...
Maybe the newspapers in Back To The Future : Part II don't seem so far fetched now.. remeber the headlines & articles used to change and you used to get embedded video and stuff? Might not be quite paper thin, but I guess the technology will continue to evolve.
Couple that with some kind of inbuilt WiFi reciever (complete with city wide WiFi network) and there it is.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
At least that has been my experience. Has anyone else experienced something different? Any models you could recommend?
It take more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in God
"unlikely you'll be reading faster than four pages a second"
Errr... I don't think that's much of a problem. Who the fuck reads faster than four pages a second?
Think before you post, children.
How about programmable animated tattoos using skin-mountable biofoil?
The idea appears in K.W. Jeter's Farewell Horizontal, an engaging novel about motorcycle gang warfare on the outer face of a miles-high cylinder.
-kgj
Check out "Optical Camouflage Technology" at this link. I heard there were some recent improvements made to it to get rid of the green tint. Here is another link.
CRT for ever.
I'm smarter than the average bear.
This is a golden opportunity for investors, if true.
From personal experience with these displays, it looks like they fade to black before updating their information. At least at this stage of development, this would limit usage as a video monitor.
even cowboyNeal doesn't read his own website.
Forget the LCDs - the real story here is that a Slashdot editor made an attempt to prevent dupes. ;-)
> Or is it silly to even think of having 300 pages of this stuff
PAGE CAPACITY OVERFLOW - download aborted.
Your book doesn't support more than 504 pages.
Basically, it is 2 XGA displays at 180dpi that doesn't require refresh, so can last a few months on 2 AA batteries. It reads contents stored on an SD card. The weight is only 500 gram. I like physical books compared to bulky PDAs with small screens, but something like this could become serious competition to them.
http://msnbc.com/news/910466.asp?0cv=CB20
;-)
;-P
it reminds me of pictures of the first transistors at bell labs- all bulky and ungainly
but in it's picture you see the future gleaming bright
oops! my post is a karma-whoring dupe! sorry!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Do the editors understand that "I searched for LCD" is not an acceptable excuse? Do they understand that the reason dupes are so annoying is that we all check slashdot every fifteen minutes and remember at least the last few days worth of headlines? The people who actually *work* there aren't even as interested in it as the readers themselves? *That's* what's galling. There *is* no excuse for posting dupes, except perhaps "I was away from computers for the last week" yet even then a real slashdot reader would go and check out all the missed stories just to catch up.
Furthermore, if the slashdot editors don't read the site, and they don't really write anything, WHAT EXACTLY the fuck do they do? This is not a flame - I'm actually curious if the editors comprehend that this is why people hate dupes and won't accept today's excuse. You shouldn't have to search at all - all of us know it's a dupe within two seconds of seeing the headline.
You cut your little finger on the edge of the knife...
I look forward to the upcoming competition between these two technologies in the next few years. They both look promising in many ways. As far as I can see, the only difference between them visibly is that OLED is self-illuminated, and E-Paper is not. OLED appears a year or two ahead of E-Paper since color has been developed, and some cell phones, digital cameras, and car stereos, are beginning to implement it.
Actually, a couple years ago somebody did that. They had a calculator embeded in their skin as a tat.. and it really functioned. Boy would I have liked to have that in school. No more of my professors lame remarks "You won't always have a calculator with you so work the problems out by hand." If I remember right it used a similar kind of ink and had some method of implanting circuits under the skin. I was very impressed with the idea at the time but I haven't really heard anything more about it since.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
If you can do better then go forth and do so and make yourself some cash and get a little fame. If not then get over it. You don't have to pay to read - if you want to bitch then subscribe.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Paper thin LCDs?
Oh, that's right; you didn't read the article. And everyone making their lame LCD jokes didn't either. A quick glance at the article will reveal to you Slashbots that it's not LCD.
Okay, so it was a dupe and the editor points it out. But did he even read the article? The headline is completely wrong. Slashdot has been quite bad this year.
I'll either be ignored, modded down, or the self-righteous Slashbot defenders will jump on me, declaring it a-okay for Slashdot to post incorrect headlines and misleading summaries because I can go somewhere else. Most of those people are actually subscribers attempting to justify their payment of money to these people.
Next.
"Sufferin' succotash."
My tax guy, with an office with west facing window, much prefers the LCD over a CRT, because he can see what he is doing when the sun hits it.
Before we postulate on the sci-fi products that will be available in a decade, why not implement this technology into current portable units? A laptop computer with a screen that actually folds out or extends horizontally when the lid is opened would make for great, expansive portable computing. It seems this is imminently more immediate than a producing auto-updating newspapers and the like. Imagine a 12-inch Powerbook G4 with a wide-screen cinema display based on this paper-thin technology. I understand that this requires waiting for a 24-bit version of this 2-bit display, but i think it's worth considering. I wonder what would be the possibility of making this technology interactive? Developing a touch screen version of the same display would open up a world of possibilities. I also seem to remember a fantastic implementation of similar tech in the movie "Red Planet." The computers, voice and touch activated were built like scrolls. The screen was retractable from within a small cylinder. I know we all agree that the possibilities are seemingly endless... Wow. Otto
There's a big error here: This thin display is NOT a liquid-crystal display. Stop calling it that.
I could see it in the iLoo. I do I do.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I just modded you down -1, overrated. Sorry, but you're not funny, insightful, informative, or interesting. I think everyone else here concurs with me, and hopefully they will take action to mod this piece of trash post straight to oblivion.
Also, I looked at your site; goddamn, keep your clothes on, fatty.
Posting anoymously to save my precious karma..."
you filthy pir8, you! You are not allowed to copy sheet music without paying $$$$ to the rightful copyright owners! If everybody did this, the poor composers would starve!
They had a calculator embeded in their skin as a tat.. and it really functioned.
... anyone got details?
Far out! This would be a great SlashDot item
-kgj
Id much rather see a rigid version of the same thing, that has a stylus and pressure sensitive overlay that feel like a decent pen and paper.
give me that, and ill settle for an 1/8th of a second refresh on 96dpi black and white in a heartbeat. like a never ending scroll of paper to work on, with the entire thing savable. not to mention being able to chop out stuff you dont want easily.
maybe i could actually finish projects without having a 3 inch stack of discarded notes and ideas on the floor, and also save myself searching through them when i cant find the good page.
Ok, for one, this isnt LCD. It is E-Ink that everyone has probably heard about. LCD doesnt work by brirng black or white particles to the fore.
For two, instead of some 4Hz, two color rollable (not foldable) thing, why wouldnt you want to look at full color, super thin, high refresh rate OLEDs ?
Here is a picture of a OLED monitor..kind of makes lcd look chunkey hey?
Oleds are of course also flexible.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
So this is cowboyneal admitting he doesn't read slashdot?
M@
Krispy Cream is people
LCD? what's replacing the glass?
or did they see OLEDs instead?
this material.
They could be operated by bluetooth or by wlan.
I got this idea from a crap tv-serie Mission Impossible and I think the idea is awesome. Unfortunately there has not yet been any technology for that yet.
jkekoni@cc.hut.fi
How many people use this mythical 'extra desk space' that an LCD apparently gives them? Surely its just that empty space behind your LCD screen where the bulk of your CRT used to be? Its an invisible, hard-to-get-to space which isn't somewhere you really want to put stuff!
The only saving is that now you can have a thinner desk and have the LCD up against the wall - but that only means the pointy-hairs can squeeze more of you into the same cubespace.
Baz
These screens provide orders of magnitude improvement in both display quality and power consumption. Meaning you could build a device that would be an inch thick, last ~month on two AA batteries, and look almost as good as paper. A device with flash cards and usb1 would probably cost ~$400USD. Add 802.11b (and a bigger battery to deal with it) for another $150.
The 802.11b model could be used to auto download/update content. It could sync up to a PC base station that is running an app that constantly spiders content, providing a virtually unlimited supply of sorted, free, and interesting, things to read.
...paper?
http://www.virtual-ed.org/SPNstream.mov
If we go the route of e-newspapers, how the heck am I going to potty train my puppies? the newspaper is dirt cheap and extremely useful in the training of puppies. And what about the Paper mache market? They'll be crippled.
my thick cock, you fuckhat
well considering it is used in a church that has a site license for the music, i don't see this as a problem.