Digital Ink On Billboards

cdneng2 writes "The New York Times has this article on a revolutionary new billboard. It uses digital ink, versus the typical CRT, LCD, Neon, or Plasma displays that are so prominent on the newer billboards that wastes electricity. From the article: 'By creating a paste made of tiny helix-shaped particles that can be minutely manipulated with electric charges to reflect light in highly specific ways, Magink can produce surfaces that look like paper but behave like electronic screens, rendering high-resolution, full-color images without ink - or, as Magink executives like to refer to the process, with digital ink.' The billboard can display images at 70 frames per second." You can find more articles on the billboard technology on the Magink website.

Comments

whitepaper stats

[Spy Hunter]

From their whitepaper:

Print quality image

Combining 5mm pixel pitch, an RGB color model with 4096 colors, and a superior contrast ratio of 14:1, magink digital ink technology achieves an extremely natural look that very much resembles the look of printed images on paper.

Compatibility to outdoor lighting environment

magink's digital ink display billboard is reflective of incident light and requires no integrated illumination. Light that falls on the display from either the sun or external light sources is actually beneficial to the visibility of the image. A beautiful image is maintainable under the full range of daylight conditions.

Low energy consumption

magink display does not require any power to maintain an image: the image is held under power-off conditions. Only when replacing one image with another does the display require punctual application of power in order to set the new image.

Since energy is needed only for refreshing the image and since magink's digital ink reflective display does not require back lighting, power consumption is low yielding less energy consumption, less heat dissipation and a longer mean time between failure (MTBF).

Re:Response Time & Dot Pitch?

[koniosis]

response time is different from refresh, i'll explain. If you take a normal LCD they usually have a 60Hz refresh and say 25-30ms response. What this means is that the LCD can show 60 different frams every second. However, the response time measures how long it takes for the LCD to change frames, the longer the time the longer the last image that was on the LCD is displayed, so if you have a high response time (25ms is considered normal but not good) then you will get "streaking" effects, where the previous frames overlap with the new frames. This can cause a horrible image and is very noticeable when the frames are very different e.g. fast motion graphics (films, games). Newer LCDs report a 16ms response, which makes streaking almost invisible in most cases. So you see, this is why I wanted to know what the response of the ink is.

Also you may be wondering about TVs and their response time, T.Vs and Monitors (CRT) don't have a response time (or more to the point its the same as the refresh) because on a CRT screen the previous frame is not remembered as the "pixels" on a CRT so to speak, need to be constatly energised to display anything, so the second that the cathode ray stops hitting the phosphor the image dissapears, thus no reponse time.

Re:A question

[AlecC]

Yes, you can shine a flashlight through paper from behind. But the losses are horrendous - I woudl ahve though >95%. Consider how close you have to bring the flashlight to see the picture from behind, vs how far away you can take the same flashlight if you are shining from the front. You woudl be much better spending your energy shining a light from the front - and a floodlight is probably much cheaper than an equivalent area of computer backlight.

Horses for courses - if you really want an emissive display, go for the current technologies of LCD or plama. This is something difffernt and, potentially, better. I took my laptop into the garden yesterday - and had great difficulty reading it because of sunlight. This would get easier to read with more light.

Humans are creatures of light; emissive displays are creatures of dark. Putting the two together requires compromises: avoid directt light sources, fear reflections. Turn the light down and your screen becomes more readable but fine print documentation becomes less readable. Turn lhe light up and the screen washes out as the fine print comes into focus. With absorbtive displays, the two become visible together. And reduced power consumption has got to be good. This might make e-books worth having. Battery life greatly increased, because power only consumed when you move the page (system can completely power down between button pushes), readable in a bright light.

Remember LED watches, as mocked in Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy? LCDs (non-lit) wiped those out almost overnight, because using power for a continuous, slowly changing display is ridiculous.

Don't expect new displays to be identical to old - evaluate and exploit their differences. If you analyse them, both CRTs and LCDs are rotten displays - but they are the best we have got, so we use them everywhere. Sometime soon someone is going to come out with a good absorbtive display - maybe this one, maybe another - and that will spread like wildfire.