LG.Philips Develops World's First Color E-Paper

An anonymous reader writes "LG.Philips LCD has announced it has developed the world's first 14.1-inch flexible color E-paper display, equivalent in size to an A4 sheet of paper. The 14.1-inch flexible color E-paper uses electronic ink from E-Ink Corp. to produce a maximum of 4,096 colors. It can be viewed from a full 180 degrees, so that images always appear crisp, even when the display is bent."

Comments

Wonderful

[Dirtside]

Now how about a damn picture?

An advertisers dream

[GFree]

Now you just know the advertisers are gonna get a hold of this technology and slap animated ads on cereal boxes or something.

Minority Report anyone?

Re:An advertisers dream

[ratsnapple tea]

Actually, I doubt it, seeing as this stuff still looks to be too expensive and fragile to be treated as disposable.

I think a lot of these "e-paper" technologies kind of miss the whole point of paper, which is not that it happens to be flexible and reflective, or even in color, but that it's cheap enough and portable enough to bring with you literally anywhere. Paper was ubiquitous long before the invention of four-color separation.

Re:An advertisers dream

[mrchaotica]

I agree that it's not nearly as "revolutionary" as some people think it is, but still -- if it gives me better battery life on my portable computer (while, ideally, retaining my ability to watch videos (I know the refresh rate isn't there yet)), I'm all for it!

Re:An advertisers dream

[walt-sjc]

No, I don't think they do. The point is to be able to create a device that is "portable enough to bring with you literally anywhere" that doesn't require 5kg of batteries to keep it running. It's about high-resolution, low power, persistent image display. Think about a newspaper. Now think about something the size of a pad of paper that can hold every current issue of newspaper and magazine in the world... Try lugging around the paper equivalent... Cost is not an issue since it's not a "disposable" device. You buy it once and use it for YEARS. If it's less expensive than the cost of printing and delivering physical copies of every newspaper and magazine you subscribe to in a year, it has paid for itself. BTW, the cost of printing and mailing / delivering is generally significantly more than the subscription price.

Re:An advertisers dream

[Zaatxe]

seeing as this stuff still looks to be too expensive and fragile to be treated as disposable.

Paper was once a very expensive media too!

Re:An advertisers dream

[CastrTroy]

Isn't the whole point of ePaper that you don't have to refresh it 60 times a second to keep the image there? Isn't that where all the power savings come from? It makes it ideal for books and things, where the image only changes once ever minute, at most, but nto ideal when you're playing a video, where you would need to change the display at least 24 times a second. Idealy you would only have to change the pixels that change (like how mpeg encodes video), but that's still a lot of changes. Maybe i'm just a little naive, but I don't see this being the right technology for video.

Re:An advertisers dream

[walt-sjc]

I specifically don't want something I have to worry about keeping track of.

You must have a devil of a time with your cell phone, laptop, keys, etc.

it's cheap and ubiquitous enough for me to be able to pick up and read the folded AM New York someone else left

You wouldn't need to read someone else's copy because you would have your own on your tablet.

Once we have reasonably priced e-ink tablets (and I think they would need to get down in the sub $300 range,) I would hope that tree-killing paper magazines and newspapers go away. Newspapers are horrible. World-wide, there are probably about a half-billion copies printed every day, with only a very small fraction getting recycled. I don't even want to know have many dozens of acres of forest wiped out there are just for newspapers alone. Probably double that for all the catalogs and magazines.

I would like to see these devices have some kind of wireless receivers (maybe on unused TV channels) that can receive digital downloads of this kind of content automatically (for whatever you subscribe to.) No need for wifi or cellphone connection (it's one-way) although I wouldn't mind if it also had wifi / bluetooth.

Re:It is transparent?

[Mr Jazzizle]

This just gave me an awesome idea: E-Paper post-its! Imagine having standard looking post-its around your moniter, or your office, or wired down to your kitchen (or, as long as I'm dreaming, wireless) that change corresponding to your Outlook to-do or however you wish to program them. That'd be rad. And some stuff tacked onto a bulletin board. I just love the idea of just tacking a screen to something.

Incredible opportunities

[rkohutek]

The opportunities for this kind of technology are limitless. Really - books, notes, travel, magazines, anything can be digitized and made incredibly accessible.

Not to mention there is no doubt that the low power nature of it makes it ready for solar power, making it an incredible communication tool in non-power friendly places, like say deserts or jungle for military use. The fact that it's flexible makes it able to handle harsh environments - simply roll it up, stick it in a tube and keep on going. Computer on top of Everest, anyone?

Really, this is an incredible breakthrough and deserves plenty of attention; I'm not sure the market is ready for it yet, but this kind of technology will absolutely become a part of our day-to-day lives in short order.

Re:Incredible opportunities

[Urusai]

This stuff is less flexible than your average overhead projector film. Let's get serious: until you can fold it, it's not "e-paper".

what we would like to see now

[v1]

is a video of this display in action. I'd like to see someone bending and flexing the panel while playing Terminator on it or something,

Also, I did not notice mention of how the panel is lit. Is this like a color LCD display that requires a backlight, or is it self-luminescent? There's no point to a flexible panel if it has to be backlit by an inflexible light source. The e-ink I have seen in the past requires a backlight.