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."

Comments

Marketing madness!

[Empiric]

Okay, it might be way too late at night for me to be posting, but...

I wonder if the advent of multimedia paper, as it were, will create a sea-change in the nature of all types of advertising.

As it stands now, most every box/can/available-surface of products is in some way branded advertising for the product, like, your coke can says, naturally, "Coca-Cola". This advertising must translate into some approximately-calculable value for the Coca-Cola company, in terms of more coke sales.

But... is there an inflection point at which an ad for something else (say, Porsche cars) would be more valuable than the advertisement for coke? If so, might companies sell space on all manner of products wrapped in this multimedia-paper like banner ads?

It might be interesting to open my refrigerator and see a few-dozen multimedia presentations on various consumer goods, changing every morning, but... well, maybe a final trip in that Porsche to some Amish community might be more sanity-preserving.

Re:Marketing madness!

[jestill]

I am afraid that as costs come down you may be right. Combine this with low cost sound systems and you have a recipe for complete madness. This sort of thing has been explored in the Minority Report Movie, and to some extend in Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age'.

Re:Marketing madness!

[Simon]

It's not all bad news. These things will contain computers. Imagine hacking your wheaties box to show something more interesting. You could directly recycle and reuse all of the 'paper' you receive.

If annoying animation gets out of hand, a few seconds in a microwave oven will probably fix the problem. ;-)

--
Simon

Impressive. Now, when does it ship?

[silentbozo]

Color e-paper, great for display devices, able to replace LCDs, etc. Now when do these things go into mass production? I'd love to have flexible solar cells at pennies per yard, but I can't get those yet either.

"Great" frequency?

[WegianWarrior]

The frequency would be great, would hurt your eyes after a couple minutes I would guess...

I guess that depends on what you mean by a "great" frequency. In Europe, television has a frequency of 50Hz (it's 60Hz in the US) - even if I've heard that two and two frames are alike, in other words that the frequency is 25 or 30Hz. Movies in theaters are usually run at 24 frames per second, in other words a frequency of 24Hz.

There is no real need to have frequencies running much higher than that to watch a movie - since a frequency of 72Hz would just mean that the same picture would be drawn three times over, and thats a waste on a device like this.

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.

Re:"Great" frequency?

[AlecC]

I guess that depends on what you mean by a "great" frequency. In Europe, television has a frequency of 50Hz (it's 60Hz in the US) - even if I've heard that two and two frames are alike, in other words that the frequency is 25 or 30Hz. Movies in theaters are usually run at 24 frames per second, in other words a frequency of 24Hz.

TV has a field rate of 50/50 hz. Fields are alternately the odd and even lines of the picture, so the frame rate is 25/30 hz. The two fields are spatially slightly separated, so even on a still picture they are not the same; the second field gives you more information than the first. But if the original capture mechanism was a video camera, the two fields are captured at different times as well as different places, so it gives better motion display.

There is no real need to have frequencies running much higher than that to watch a movie - since a frequency of 72Hz would just mean that the same picture would be drawn three times over, and thats a waste on a device like this.

You are correct that film is at 24 hz. However, cinema projectors deliberatly flicker the light at 48 hz to give an impression of better movement. Once you get the trick of it, it is quite easy to spot 24-frame film material on TV, and it can become annoying.

50/60 hz field rate, and making a frame out of two fields, are both in fact economy measures. When TV was first invented, high rates were difficult and expensive, and there was a tradeoff between picture quality and cost. In fact, percieved movement quality increases up to frame rates in the low 70s of Hz - hence 80Hz being "as good as you will ever need".

A frame will be displayed 3 times at 72 hz only if it is sourced from a traditional film camers - a breed which is slowly dying out. All news cameras are now electronic, and Lucas is filming the Star Wars series electronically - othere will follow, slowly. Some of the new HDTV standards have 60 true frames, not 60 fields, per second.

As I say, existing TV standards are a compromise for the tradeoffs of an earlier day. We will eventially get newer standards, and hence better pictures. But once a set of standards are embedded in the comsumer marketplace, there is a massive lag in the adoption of new standards.

Not e-books, perhaps, but...

[achurch]

I'll still take real dead trees over electronic paper for my leisure reading, 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. Alternatively, take the paper to your favorite country getaway, write up a story, and (assuming your handwriting is decently legible) have it automatically OCR'd into text for later editing, without needing to lug a laptop around and all the associated annoyances.

I dunno, sounds good to me . . .

Re:Not e-books, perhaps, but...

[lipi]

...but how about the opposite application: writing?

Xerox has been there, done that:

"Through a chemical process that Xerox is holding as a trade secret, "each ball is given an electric charge, with more on one side than on the other," Sheridon explains. So when an electric field is applied to the surface of the sheet, the balls are lifted in their oil-filled cells, rotated like the needles of tiny compasses to point either their black or their white hemispheres eyeward, and then slammed against the far wall of the cell. There they stick, holding the image, until they are dislodged by another field. At high voltages, the balls stick before completing their rotation, thus producing various shades of gray. Sheridon's group has also produced red-and-white displays and is working on combining balls of various hues to produce full-color ones.
(...)
But the real goal, Sheridon says, is also the most distant: an electronic surrogate for paper. Engineer Matt Howard hands me a wooden pencil that is plugged into a weak power supply. As I write on the sheet, the tiny electric field conducted through the pencil's graphite core darkens the screen wherever the tip touches. Howard is working on a handheld wand that will receive text and images from a computer and scan them onto a Gyricon page, which would then be annotated, photocopied, erased--but not discarded."

Copy of the Scientific American article is here , but you may find other references.

Re:I welcome our new e-paper overloads...

[Jace of Fuse!]

Your point almost makes sense, until you consider the fact that all people are in fact suffering from more stress and enduring more psychological problems than previous generations.

You can blame better diagnosis (or misdiagnosis) if you want, but really I'm not sure the typical human is really meant to be as smart as society now days expects it to be. A natural human living off of the land really needs to know nothing more than how to make a spear, run from big beasts, and keep out of the rain.

Technology (be it tending crops or inventing holodecks for wild endless regret-free sexual encounters), builds on technology. Each generation has tools and knowledge that previous generations didn't have. At what point will it reach a level where few people can cope? Even now days most poeple haven't got a clue what's going on inside a computer. Most people haven't got any idea how a telephone, automobile, or television works.

How many times have you heard someone say "I don't need that many features on my TV/VCR/Microwave/etc"?

Some people evolve with the times, others just learn to cope, but more and more I think we're going to see people who simply can't hack it all. As more and more people become unable to deal with it, I can honestly see us finding a name for whatever disorder they supposedly have, fiding some medication for it, and then sending them on along their way.

We'll think they're slow, or stupid, or have no common sense, but in reality, these people could probably make a spear and hide in a cave as well (maybe even better) than the other overly cereberal upright hairless apes.

Voila!

[rwaldin]

Print one of these and you'll have all the magic animated paper you need without electronics or drugs!

Re:guess what:

[ColaMan]

Just wait until someone develops a proxy filter for your downloadable newspaper content.

Ads? What Ads? :-)