ePaper To Be Used For Newspapers and Magazines

rustbear writes "The Guardian reports that cheap, paper-thin TV screens that can be used in newspapers and magazines have been unveiled by German electronics giant Siemens. The firm says the low production costs could see the magazine shelves in newsagents come alive with moving images vying for the customers' attention as they move along the aisle. The Siemens spokesman said that one square metre of the material costs around £30, and scientists working on the screens said they should be available by 2007."

Comments

moving magazine covers

[Crunchie Frog]

Cant wait to see the top shelf in that newsagent

Re:moving magazine covers

[should_be_linear]

Cant't wait for MS ads on my toilet paper.

All the print- that's news to fit.

[Leontes]

It's about bloody time. It's hard to imagine, but newspapers will be modular, dynamic, constantly updating. Don't judge a book by it's cover: especially since it was something else five minutes ago. Some error in publication? It's been recorrected. Information becomes a wiki, constantly edited, by thousands of hands. The transition into paying for the content-makers, continues it's eclipse, while content becomes even less brick and mortarish.

Re:All the print- that's news to fit.

[KiloByte]

It's hard to imagine, but newspapers will be modular, dynamic, constantly updating.
... and they will self-destruct after you read them once. Welcome to the DRM world!

Also, Stallman's "Right to Read" may be sadly so true...

Re:All the print- that's news to fit.

[meringuoid]

... and they will self-destruct after you read them once. Welcome to the DRM world!

Bad, but it could be so much worse. Imagine this, though: you go back to your newspaper clippings from 2003 to check up on just what the Prime Minister had to say back then. 'Saddam Hussein is evil and must be removed,' you read. 'Whether or not he has weapons of mass destruction is irrelevant; this is a campaign to spread freedom and democracy.'

Hmm. Not what I remember. But it was a long time ago, and there it is in black and white. Guess we weren't lied to after all...

Oceania is at war with Eurasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

wallpaper

[Anonymous Coward]

is anyone else thinking wallpaper here ???
colour your livingroom to your mood, no more painting...
give room-wide slideshows...

progress?

[MonoSynth]

Oh joy. Flashing ads in newspapers. I can't wait.

Great

[SetupWeasel]

Oooh! Maybe they can attach a speaker so we can hear what Bill Gates and 75 other people have to say about Windows XP Media Center edition.

My question. How the hell am I going to block popups in my magazines?

Yes, but...

[c0l0]

...can you squash flies with it?

and the downside...

[MonoSynth]

nineteen eighty-four.

Re:Sensible* investment

[Altima(BoB)]

I'm not seeing this as a death for regular paper. Let's say ePaper is adopted, I doubt that EVERY page of a newspaper will utilize it. In fact, I'd say only the front page would be used. I'm sure their new presses could still be put to good use.

This said, a lot of magazines are pretty pricey as it is, what'll they do to their prices if this new device is used on the cover of every issue, no matter what the cost of production? What if the main users of this device are a magazine's advertisers? How about you read an article if the adjoining page has a constantly moving ad? And is a moving image really better? A well composed still image can sometimes be more effective than a moving one. I am loathe to think that the likes of Newsweek or Time will turn into CNN lookalikes ith fancy current events themed graphics flying everywhere. I for one dread the advent of this ePaper. The only useful benefit I could see would be for a broadsheet newspaper to show a video of the top news story. That's it really.

I'm mystified

[infolib]

We think that at the moment the screens will appear first in more expensive magazines in the form of high-impact adverts. But as the price sinks we expect them to appear in papers as well, possibly as a really attention-grabbing front page.

How about selling blank screens to customers, then have them download content? I mean, we don't throw away our computer screens at every page update. Does anyone know why this guy seems to think completely backwards?

Re:I'm mystified

[rolfwind]

Well, maybe because this will be touted to be environmently friendly, the guy is thinking "The more of these we use, the faster we save the environment!"

What about the power supply, processor, etc.?

[Rico_za]

Making the screen paper thin doesn't solve the rest of the problem : getting images on the screen. How is a magazine going to contain the power supply en processor needed to actually display something on the screen? More detail in the article would have been helpfull, now it just sounds like some scifi hype story.

Re:What about the power supply, processor, etc.?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more information and a picture at http://www.physorg.com/news7079.html

The displays can obtain their energy from printable batteries, which are already available. Because they last only a few months, this solution is only feasible for merchandise with high throughput rates or short-use durations. It may also prove feasible to use printed antennas as a local energy source. They would receive pulses from a transmitter in the shelf and convert the pulses into electricity.

Twirlip

Re:What about the power supply, processor, etc.?

[MacGod]

I don't know how high the power requirements are, but what about something like the Kinetic Power for watches? Basically, they have self-winding main springs that are wound by the motion of the wearers wrist (spare us the obvious jokes). I don't have a link, but I know some of them can retain power for weeks, even after being removed from the wearer's wrist. They even had one that would go into lower pwoer mode if removed for a while, and would track the time for years. One flick of the wrist a year later and it would instantly snap to the right time.

Now, put one of these on an eNewspaper, and just carrying the thing in your briefcase might be enough to keep it charged.

Tune in, turn on, drop out

[fmwap]

How old were you when people stopped reading and started watching?

I admit I don't read much anymore except off a monitor, but reading requires thinking. A dog can watch and listen.

On a less serious note, this was already tried on cereal boxes in Minority Report, with mixed customer acceptance.

2007

[Anonymous Coward]

> scientists working on the screens said they should be available by 2007

Translation: 2025

I hope so but don't hold your breath . .

[Brendor]

WIRED mentioned (halfway down) this (or a similar PARC technology) back in '99, and I got real excited about it. Nice to see some traction finally starting to form.

While the Harry Potter style pictures mentioned in the article sound cool, a low power, lightweight ebook reader could conceivably change publishing for the better. Maybe after high end advertising subsidizes the development of the technology enough, someone will release an environmentally conscious magazine format that can be refilled RSS style.

Since the pages only need to be powered when their updated, solar power might not be completely unrealistic. Would definitely face hurdles with the pulping industry . . .

Forgot the obvious?

[KDR_11k]

How about applying that to product packaging? Movies could have the trailer on the back, games a few seconds of gameplay footage. Instead of a TV playing those ad videos for some stuff it could be printed right on the back.

Details, image and thoughts

[sane?]

A bit more detail, together with an image can be found here.

It looks like at the moment its B&W, but colour is probably quite a quick upgrade. Resolution looks high, but with the electrode approach there will be a tradeoff I'm sure. Since it looks like the aim is a totally printed technology it should be possible to bring the cost right down.

The main market they seem to be targeting is the fast moving packaging market - fast moving so that printed batteries don't wear out. I would guess that they will seriously be looking at those large billboards as well. However, if you really let your imagination go to town there are many more opportunities for a cheap, large scale, printed display technology. When paired with the other devices which can be printed (chips, antenna, batteries, solar cells, keyboards, and flat panel speakers) you have the possibility of really putting computers anywhere and everywhere for the cost of the materials and a bit of printing. Think smart environment that your PAN interacts with as you move through it.

Techie heaven

It is already there.

[WindBourne]

It has an invisible ink. re-read it after using it, and it will all make sense.

Link to Siemens

[Bozovision]

And this link should take you to the Siemens page about it, which has a photo too.

Looks like the reason they are targeting it at packaging initially is because the images change slowly.

Hack that paper!!

[Noryungi]

Seriously, I can see it now: some enterprising young hackers (in the tinkerer sense of the word) are going to hack those flat screens, add a bunch of electronics and a standard VGA/S-Video connector, improve the resolution, write an open-source driver and turn them into the largest high-res black and white screen ever seen. Think humonguous, wall-to-wall X11R6 display for 100 bucks, folks.

The original website will be promptly slashdotted to death, 13 seconds after the project is released into the wild. ... And the next morning, all the newspapers concerned are going to sue the poor schmucks, invoking the DMCA and saying, in effect, that the users have a license to use these screens, but do not really own them.

£30 per square meter isn't viable for Newspa

[Andy_R]

While there are a lot of things you could do with a slow-refresh display device at this price point, such as animated vehicle paint, billboards, constructing a video dance-mat 300ft wide to play pacman 'for real' and making disneyland look even more like a bad acid trip, producing a newspaper that sells for less than the price of a hardcover book isn't one of them.

Re:Sensible* investment

[panurge]

Well, OK, "Hamburger" might be mildly amusing as a synonym for "Berliner" (A hamburger is a rissole in a bun, a Berliner is a cream cake) but actually the dear old Guardian has stolen a massive march on News International. It now has a full color press that produces a larger format than the partial color tabloid presses used by NI. If you look at the newsstands, the G stands out compared to the Times, the Independent and the (grey-looking) Telegraph.

So, far from going against this trend, they are actually ahead of it. They have just raised the stakes in daily print media - and Rupe is now trying to find a suitable site to build his own color press. Which will take at least 18 months of unwelcome competition. Given the innate conservatism of serious newspaper readers, and the realistic rate of adoption of e-paper, the Guardian's press is likely to have an effective life of at least 10 years. That sounds like a good investment decision to me.

Disclaimer - I work for a print consultancy but my views do not necessarily reflect those of the business.

moving images

[Cappy Red]

To broaden your point a bit: do we need more moving pictures? I'm not advocating against the technology, just saying that I see enough images moving about daily as it is.

With TV and the internet, there are plenty of videos and animations to take in with, or as part of your information diet. The permanence and patience of newspapers and magazines is a nice diversion from the visual bombardment of those other mediums.

Three words why this will happen.

[mwvdlee]

Real size porn.