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Flexible Electronic Paper
shri writes "E Ink has just announced a breakthrough in flexible electronic paper displays. The new display which has a 100DPI resolution and is only 300 microns thick has the potential of truely changing the way we read our information."
I thought this was already posted?
Harish
Highlights of this display include a thickness of 300 microns and is reported as flexible as construction paper. The 10.1 inch display has a resolution of 600x800 and a pixel density of 100 pixels per inch. Most LCD / CRT monitor displays have a pixel density of 72-96 PPI. The contrast ratio is at a low 10:1 and the display can show 4 levels of grey. While this seems low, it is more than adequate for reading in well lighted conditions. Keep in mind that most printed books are at 2 levels (black and white).
Perhaps the low contrast ratio will help make it readable for long periods...much more important than whether or not it 'bends'
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Yes, higher resolutions and perhaps more than 4 levels of grey...
Besides, they have these 'awesome' wall-hangable TVs already: Plasma or LCD, depending on preference.
so many possibilities
Maybe, yet you picked the most retarded application for flexible, ultra-thin, low-quality displays.
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So there you are reading your favorite rag. After you turn to the next page of the article your reading and get settled in for more, an annoying flash generated addvertisment pops up, covering the page forcing it's self on you, preventing you from reading the article until it's finished. Let's just hope this type of technology doesn't get abused. lease don't
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
All you save is eraser rubbings.
Or you save paint, or ink, or writing materials we couldn't dream of in the physical world. Not to mention that digital ink, paint, etc. can all be easily erased or transformed, unlike their real-world counterparts.
I think even more important than saving materials is the fact that you could annotate webistes, documents, whatever, making this (what the GP mentioned, not what the article speaks of) much more than really expensive pencil and paper.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
Four levels of grey I could probably handle for a TV, but the 1 Hz refresh rate that I would have problems with.
Also, a computer screen may have 96 dpi[,] but it "fools" my eyes into having more than that by antialiasing text with subpixel rendering
This is true, but only to a certain extent. Sub-pixel rendering improves readability, but that doesn't prevent readable fonts from being produced. For example, a Palm Pilot may only have 72 DPI, but it can still produce highly readble text on a 4 shade greyscale screen. Also, I would remind you that PostScript was designed around the 72 DPI printers that were common when it was invented.
(17 inch LCD, thanks for asking)
You're welcome.
I doubt that would happen with a 4-shades-of-gray epaper, and THAT is why a printed fax looks so awful.
A printed fax can look just fine with the right equipment. The fax equipment I use at our office produces very crisp results. The reason for the poor faxes have more to do with earlier models of Fax Machines that could only distinguish white and black, with nothing in between. This made any sort of color variation come across as if it were "smudged". More modern fax machines attempt to produce a better greyscale result.
Ever heard of eye strain or Computer Vision Syndrome?
Sure, I have the issue myself. There's no denying that computers use a piss poor resolution. However, it *is* highly readable, which is in direct opposition to your point.
everybody reads books and newspapers in a computer screen.
I can't speak for "everybody", but I do. I read quite a few books on my Palm Pilot, thank you very much. Feel free to visit the Baen Free Library some time for some modern books that may suit your fancy. And, of course, there's alway Gutenberg.
100dpi = FAX resolution (low-quality)
Umm... no... Fax machines have crummy quality scanners and lossy compression techniques so they do not represent 100dpi well. Go scan a quality pic at 100dpi on a good scanner and let me know what you think of the quality.
Here's a sample at 100dpi.
More
I can't see how 4 shades of grey is useful unless it didn't require power to keep the display
According to the company's website, power is required to produce the image but not to sustain it. Presumably it degrades with time I couldn't find any info on this. One of the figures in this PDF suggest the image can persist for at least 100s, but who knows what this will be by the time the product is ready for the market - whenever that is.
300 microns is 0.3 millimeters.
That's not paper, it's card-stock.
It's not even that. It's plastic.
Um, is there any part of this metaphor that isn't just marketing hype?
Cobine that with the prism foil used to achieve cheap 3D effects and the holodeck is coming! :-) Seriously, I'd love wallpaper from this stuff, Imagine displaying a realtime view from someplace outside, placing a screen "window" anywhere you need it to watch the news (Other projection technologies I've come across had their display following you around, so you could always continue watching a movie) or, combined with touch sensitivity, having virtual post-it's, posters, etc. just like a typical desktop UI. *sigh*
Not always true, but the point is not pure conservation of energy, but conservation of a rare resource at the expense of a more prolific one. Not all energy is the same.
But besides that - recycling many things produces vastly inferior products to the original (particularly with metals).
And thats a really good reason to never recycle anything, is it?
And, finally (the trollish-sounding part of my post), some of us feel it is our right to destroy the environment. I know that I do my part to destroy it bit by bit. Why? No good reason, honestly. Though if I really wanted to stretch, I'd say to give humanity a good reason to get off this rock ;)
I know that nihilistic self-destruction seems really cool when you're a teenager, but eventually you *do* need to grow up.
You will see that, in fact, the display does NOT require constant power.
There are several unique things about electronic ink technology which make it desirable:
1. Low power requirements. Once an image is set, it stays set until energy is used to change it. Any ambient light can be used to view it.
2. Visual appeal. Electronic ink literally looks just like a piece of paper with printing on it. Would you ask what the "dot pitch" is of a page of newspaper, or of a paperback book? It looks this way under all viewing angles and lighting conditions, including bright sunlight.
3. Flexibility. This kind of display can be rolled up and carried with you, or spooled into a carrier much as a window shade rolls up.
There are still several weaknesses in the technology; for example, the refresh rate is rather low. But the technology is new and still in commercial development.
An example: My favorite "dream application" for this technology would be a "book" with electronic ink pages, with the "binding" containing a small computer system. Then you could upload many different texts into your book and it could shift from one to another at the touch of a button. It would take virtually no power since the images are fixed once set; turn on the computer, "open" your newest title, turn off the computer, and read as long as you like, no power necessary.
I have been a fan of this technology ever since I first heard of the idea in Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age". A web search several years ago turned up E-Ink and other companies developing this technology, several of which have been mentioned on Slashdot in previous months. However, this is the first "full-sized" display I've heard about.
IMHO, the long development time doesn't represent vaporware, it signifies good business sense. It was foolish to deploy this technology when there was little industrial infrastructure to support it, and when its capabilities were still far below those of LCDs and well-established display technologies.
Instead, they have waited to release it until its advantages outweigh the remaining unsolved problems. Once those few problems are solved it will easily out-compete existing display technologies, except perhaps in a few specialized applications.
A book out of electronic pages would probably be a waste. On a single display, dual display -- maybe a book that flips out to only two pages, I can paginate electronically like a PDF reader. One page can represent and display multiple pages (though not at the same time without scaling or zooming).
I think there would also be interface problems/challenges with having multiple pages. You'd have to track which pages are hidden or folded down and which ones are active or shown. For example, if I'm on Page1 and I want to search the book, where does my search box pop up to? All pages? The first page?
Turning electronic pages physically would be a novelty I think. Books of paper have pages and page flipping because there is no other option. You can't store information in the same space because ink would overwrite other ink. On this e-paper though, I think you could design a better interface and improve on the book rather than try to emulate it. Emulation is a waste IMHO, like having an electronic keyboard with real strings in the back that don't do anything (well maybe not a great analogy).
Having an entire wall as a touchscreen would be ideal for police for example (ala Minority Report). Having worked with data organisation and cross-referencing I can say that the ability to view all the data at once in at a sensible scale, combined with the ability to 'save' an entire wall's work whilst you check something else, videos, real-time info etc. would be absolutely invaluable.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Well, the application area for this is NOT TV.
E-ink has most advantage in applications when static images are displayed for a longer time because it doesn't consume energy in that state (only when switching basically).
So, this makes it perfectly suitable for low framerate applications like e-book readers, not TV sets.
It also doesn't pass light through the display as a LCD does, it reflects light, just like paper. Pointing an external light source on your TV set is also not very likely to give a good result.
wtf? did people somehow colectively forget about FOLEDs? why do people see such hope in e-ink becoming some kind of awesome video display? organic leds are being developed for just that purpose and actually have a refresh rate. oleds would make way better hang-on-your-wall tv's and foleds would make a good laptop screen to roll up and take with you. so what gives? i thought e-ink was just to put in books to store multiple e-books or have newspapers (maybe with personlized preferences?) that can download the latest news.
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?