Slashdot Mirror
Paper Capable Of Playing Videos Developed
Makarand writes "Nature has posted an article describing paper capable of displaying video using rearrangeable electronic ink, being produced by Philips Research Labs (in the Netherlands). The paper-display draws
power from a lightweight battery, and displays data stored in a portable chip. The display consists of pixels containing a drop of colored ink that can spread over a reflective white background under electrical control to create colors. With fast switching times and lower switching voltages, these paper-displays are capable of displaying video images."
We're that much closer to those creepy animated singing cereal boxes from Minority Report...
remember those old, cabinet-sized gothic beautiful wooden radios with huge glowing tubes visible from the back? some of you might have only seen them in museums
;-P
did you think to yourself "good gosh, what archaic times" when you saw them? we probably all did
and then i see news like this, and know how people like us, who grew up with crt screens and space heater-looking computer cases with noisy fans in the back, will be seen as archaic some day
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is partially true as I understand it. When the ink is layed down the screens for the four colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) are not aligned perfectly. They are offset so many degrees apart and a printer could tell you the optimum settings to avoid moire patterns. Perhaps this could have something to do with it.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Effectively, films and TV go at 25/30 (europe/US)frames per second. However, as you've noticed, TVs have twice the frequency needed to show such frame rates. In fact, 100Hz TVs are becoming quite common in Europe, and I guess 120Hz TVs will also be available in the US. This is because, althought 25 fps is enough to make your brain see continous motion, it's actually so slow that you would notice a lot of flickering on the TV screen if it had a 25Hz refresh rate (because of the way the screen is redrawn). I have not seen any of these papers working, but I guess that the same thing might be applicable here.
Video and televsion are recorded on film, which has a delay on each frame. this delay captures a set amount of time, also known as motion blur. When people move on film, their body movements are actually slightly blurred (but not so much that it coudl be noticed easily), creating the illusion of smooth animation. If you play videogames on your monitor, you'd immediately see the difference between 24FPS and 60FPS. If you're a habitual gamer, you'd even be able to see the difference between 80 and 100 FPS (depending on the game). As someone else has pointed out, interlacing plays an important role in visual perception as well. I can actually see my monitor flickering right now, while I'm running at 60hz (i have an old monitor). It's even more apparent on cheap screens, where I can see the mouse cursor flicker. On nice TFTs that interlace the image updates and also hold their "color"(persist between updates), it looks really smooth. On horrible flatpanels, it looks really awful, even at 80hz, if they don't use good refresh techniques.
More and more, it seems like a large percentage is sex-starved, I-want-to-be-funny goofballs
This part is +1 insightful, rest looks like a typical flamebait. Note most nerds ARE sex-starved, funny goofballs - and this is their site with their news and their style comments! If you don't like that, move elsewhere, there are many science news sites on the web. The fact that slashdot is not as classy as YOU would like it, doesn't mean it needs to be changed. It means that YOU need to look for a more classy place.
And hell, somebody mod me offtopic or flamebait and I'll get really pissed off!
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In addition, there might not make much sence in talking about frequeny at all on a device like this; if they want to save on power, they only alter the state of the pixels that actually changes between each frame.
This neglects that it takes power to simply maintain the image. As the article states, it's an application of voltage that controls the size of the inkdot pixel. The energy usage is only zero when displaying a completely black image.
Yes, I would like to have at least monochrome now. It would be great for, for example, (interactive) billboards. I get the feeling that monochrome "electronic paper" could be rolled out tomorrow, but the developers are holding back waiting for the 25 fps, 32-bit color, GeForce compatible version. I don't want to watch video or 3D graphics on "paper".
It's its. They're their, there. You're your. Who's whose? A looser loser, though those two too threw through the trough.
I'll still take real dead trees over electronic paper for my leisure reading, I I think, but how about the opposite application: writing? "Print" a document to the paper, mark it up in a meeting, and have the changes all saved without having to go back and mark it up again on your PC.
With a touchscreen-enabled piece of electronic paper writing shouldn't pose a problem. Combined with advanced text recognition it might even be superior to regular prints, as the document could be updated on the fly.
.: Max Romantschuk
This type of post is starting to get about as interesting as "First Post!!" and "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!"...
Every single new technology article covered gets someone saying "that's all well and good but they've been saying this for years. speak to me when i can buy one.".
Take the article for what it's worth. It's not a sales brochure or an investment prospectus, it's a science/tech piece.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
People in civilised countries don't mutilate their children's genitals.
I'll welcome them when slashdot runs the first story on some geek with too much time on his hands taking apart the displays from 200 (insert product here) packages and wrapping them around his car, putting cameras here and there, to build a cloaking device.
You know it's coming...
But seriously, when? I saw this stuff being touted by Xerox 5 or 7 years ago at EPCOT. They tried to impress so much with the little props and videos, only to try to gloss over the distinct LACK of Epaper on site. No true demo...
I had a sucky sig.
I don't know much about electronic paper but I pressume
A) it needs power
and B) its easy to damage.
As far as food products like soda are concerned I would think it might be taboo to package a product that holds a charge.
Also, the way stores ship, store, and bundle all the bulk they buy would run down the batteries (or if its got some sweet solar array keep it out of the light) and probably damage the display. Magnets are probably used in much of the equipment used or kept around bundles of products while in some scattered shipping state. I could go on, but it just doesn't seem feasible to me...
One thing that has been noted about E-Ink and it's like is that it only needs power to change display, while a static image is retained with no power usage. This is because the fluid that the particles are suspended in is viscous enough that they pretty much stay in place, unless a voltage is applied. This means that they can operate at very low power levels.
While it didn't say so in the paper, it appears that this new technology requires continous voltage to be applied to keep the ink from spreading out acrossed the full surface of the pixel. So this paper would likely use more power than the particle approach, and would be pure black when no power was applied, basically functionally equivalent to LCD's today. I wonder how the power consumption / price of this device will compare to LCD's once they are being mass produced. Regardless, it would be worth it to have a laptop that was easily readable outside.