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?

Re:Wonderful

[thedohman]

http://www.lgphilips-lcd.com/homeContain/jsp/eng/i nv/inv101_j_e.jsp?BOARD_IDX=1280&languageSec=E&kin ds=IN1

includes a picture, and a little tiny bit more info.
It's TFT LCD on a flexible plastic substrate instead of glass.

Re:Wonderful

[qbwiz]

No, it's not an LCD, as it uses E-Ink (little black and white capsules) - that's what makes it e-paper. It does use TFTs to rotate those capsules and change the color, however.

Re:Wonderful

[Fjan11]

The picture on that page is compressed into poststamp size format by your browser, if you right-click on the picture and do "open in new tab" you get a very detailed picture (the link includes utf-8 characters, so I can't link it directly)

Re:Wonderful

[walt-sjc]

And is that is a truly horrible picture. It's not just highly compressed jpeg, it's blurry. Maybe if they took the picture with a real camera instead of a 2001 camera phone, it would look half-way decent.

Re:Wonderful

[ratsnapple tea]

http://www.lgphilips-lcd.com/adminContain/files/(% EC%82%AC%EC%A7%84%EC%9E%90%EB%A3%8C)color%20flexib le%2001(20070511)1.jpg

Ah, TextMate, is there anything it can't do?

Re:Wonderful

[rjshields]

I didn't realise 2001 camera phones could do 3008 x 2000 resolution.

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

[CrimsonScythe]

Though it will make for some awesome novelty toilet paper!

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.

It is transparent?

[calebt3]

Once they get more colors I'd like to tack it to my wall and use it as a monitor.

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.

bedside use

[Spy Handler]

i predict this will become a success since we can use it while lying in bed like a paper magazine and look at photos and stuff, unlike current monitors :thumbsup:

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

[Mr Jazzizle]

regarding harsh enviroments, does anyone know if e-paper IS robust? being able to "simply roll it up, stick it in a tube and keep on going" would definitely be great, I'm just curious how far the tech has gotten as far as real-world usability. Maybe that's why it hasn't caught on?

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".

Re:Incredible opportunities

[metlin]

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.

The PORNOGRAPHIC opportunities for this kind of technology are limitless. Really - PORNO books, SEX notes, travel WITH JENNA, PLAYBOY 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 MASTURBATING in deserts or jungle. 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 (oh good lord, am not even going to try that one). PORN on top of Everest, anyone?

Really, this is an incredible breakthrough and deserves plenty of attention (of course it does); 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 PORN in short (ouch) order.

Re:Incredible opportunities

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I'm a skeptic. If it were so great, then where is it? We've had all kinds of half-baked technologies foisted upon us. I can think of a bunch right off the top of my head. 8-tracks; Apple Newtons; steam powered cars; ISDN; COBOL; alcohol-free beer. Those were the HALF-baked things that were sold by people who wanted to just make a buck from suckers.

This lectro paper must be even WORSE than half-baked, because nobody is selling it anywhere. I don't know why everybody's jumping every time there's some new hype about this crap. Sorry to be a skeptic, but it's my nature.

Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, this new technology will rapidly sweep aside the many current applications of black-and-white e-paper.

Sony eReader

[Usquebaugh]

I have the eReader and it's great for reading paperbacks. But tech docs fall short due to it's smallish screen. If this is really the size of an A4/Letter and has a high dpi then I see it taking off. If it's just color with a low dpi then it'll fail. I'd love an eReader with a letter display and 300dpi :-) They grey screen is cool.

Re:Sony eReader

[kalidasa]

The problem with the Sony Reader (I have one, too) is that it does not reflow PDF documents. I thought I'd be able to read stuff from O'Reilly's Safari on mine, but on average, it's more trouble than its worth. Gutenberg books work, but there's too much work involved reformatting them so they will reflow properly (i.e., fixing the line breaks). The books purchased from the eConnect store work perfectly, but the selection is awful, you have to use Windows to download them (which in my case means using virtualization), the software is terrible, and in many cases the book descriptions are not accurate (for instance, for translated books, they often have the wrong translators listed! - this would be rather like thinking you're downloading the Yo-Yo Ma performance of a cello suite only to discover that it was performed by a 17-year old at his high school recital).

Black and white version

[tsa]

I've never even seen a device with black and white e-paper in it, and now they smugly announce the colour version. Why aren't the B&W e-paper devices more popular? Does it have to do with the fact that they don't work very well, or that they are extremely expensive?

Re:Black and white version

[Lisandro]

Motorola is selling a cellphone sporting E-Ink display - it's rather crude, as the display is not dot-matrix but a segmented display (not unlike LCDs) sporting some assorted graphical icons. The kicker is that the phone sells well under 50 bucks unlocked and it's 9mm thick. Apparently, the E-Ink display is way cheaper than LCD displays to mass produce, and, since it doesn't need glass nor polarizer substrates it allows the phone to be this thin.

As for the device itself, it's a nice barebones phone, which feels very study. The display looks great, and i only wish they used a finer dot matrix display, as SMSs can be rather hard to read on it. I've been considering getting one for myself lately.

Re:Black and white version

[Axello]

There are two commercial black & white e-paper devices available to my knowledge. I happen to have one.
The iRex iLiad http://www.irextechnologies.com/ is the one I have, but Sony also makes one http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/read er/

The quality of these b&w displays is phenomenal. The difference with colour or b&w LCDs is striking, especially outside and in full sunlight.

One reason they're not so popular might be that E-Ink is prohibitely expensive; they have a monopoly on the digital ink liquid.
Also a lot of people tend to think colour is very important, neglecting the fact that 99.9% of their book library is monochrome.

Advertising campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

"Get Bent"

They're too small.

[xtal]

I've yet to see a A4 display. This is a real breakthrough, if it's affordable and available for purchase.

I want one for viewing electronic spec sheets - all PDFs, all A4, and I have thousands of them. It would be nice to have a real "paper" like display instead of doing what we do now, which is print them. I've played with the e-ink stuff before, but the resolution was far too low and the screen size was paperback-sized.

Re:They're too small.

[trawg]

Hmm, funnily enough the ones I've seen (well, the Sony one which is really the only one I have seen) is too big for me.

I just want an e-book reader that I can easily hold in one hand. I'm using an ipaq at the moment which is almost the right size, but a little bit too small - another inch or so wider would probably be good. Then I could comfortably hold it in one hand whilst reading in almost any position.

I suspect e-book readers are still too far away though due to the DRM issues. The Sony one is probably the best tech, but its crippled by lack of available titles. I've been keeping an eye out for the Hanlin Ebook after seeing it posted in a Slashdot thread ages ago, but I haven't seen any of these over my side of the pond (Australia). They look good, but again you're short on titles - at least they'll read a huge variety of formats though.

Biggest problem I see with this...

[Darth Turbogeek]

.... flushing the fucking thing if you thought the words on the e-paper were only good for wiping your ass with. Or in emergency TP shortages, what are you going to use now?

How about...

[acalthu]

..the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, like what they use in the movie? something like that could be a reality in 5 years, voice activated and all, with a few hundred GB of flash memory.

after images

[OrangeTide]

When I played with some eInk a few weeks ago it had a lot of after images. It's not (yet) appropriate for animation or video. But it is amazingly easy on the eyes. At first I thought the e-reader at the store was just a model with some fake image on the display, not so it was a real working unit.

eInk won't be replacing your PC monitor any time soon, it seems to only be practical for specialized users.

I want an E-Shirt

[CrazyJim1]

I want my E-Shirt to be tye dye, and all the colors to continually go towards the center of the shirt and disappear

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.