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Bridgestone Shows Off Ultra-Thin, Full-Color e-Paper
Bridgestone, the company which debuted the "world's thinnest" sheet of two-color e-paper last year, has turned around and delivered a new version which is capable of displaying over four thousand colors. "In case that wasn't enough, the company is also touting what it calls the "world's largest full color e-paper that is A3 size, which is equivalent to a 21.4-inch screen." As you'd expect, the latter is expected to be used solely for advertising and could hit the market as early as next year, while the former technology is set to be commercially available in 2009."
"Now is everyone ready for 'digital paper' "DRM" ???"
"This message will self erase in 5 seconds"
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
As in, the fact that they aren't revealing them means that they aren't anything to write home about. Refresh rates are going to keep this technology confined to ebook readers and advertising posters. I want stuff like this.
Wow, the e-paper he is holding in that picture has a full 4,096 shades of brown. Perfect for Doom!
Seriously, Here is an article with a better picture. Still not much contrast, but getting better.
I realize it's probably possible to do when building it, but it takes a pretty (relatively) hefty chunk of time to do anisotropic conversions of flat images (e.g. when creating image-based lighting maps for CG artwork raytracing and such), but if that could be fixed, a semi-spherical screen with the focal point being a person's head would be hella nice.
(of course, they'd still have to add about 15.9-something million colors in capability and perhaps a tighter resolution to it as well, but still... looks like it could go to some interesting places if they actually get it working).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Wow, now we're up to Amiga range from 22 years ago.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not meaning to tread on their parade, but won't these people ever get tyred of re-inventing the wheel?
*rimshot*
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Can't wait til these babies start rolling out as it'll seriously push the display market with some nice competition to increase pixel density and so on. Once people figure out how to hack these things it's going to seriously affect LCD prices. Wheee. Sadly that'll lead to DRM usage on them so people don't hijack their ads. Eh.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
What I need is a rather thin (.5 mm is enough), black and white e-paper screen with high res and low power use, in an A4/letter format. This would save me hundreds of copies of paper. I'm willing to pay up to a grand for that. Why are these idiots always focusing on full color, bendable screens? I would consider them nice extras, nothing more.
You can do better than that. Use a lens to focus the thing into a high quality digital camera and you can capture a whole video stream ( this works for TFTs as well ). Only issue is to synchronise the camera to the paper's refresh rate, and this is fairly easy to do if you have good equipment.
Thing with DRM is that it can't work in a free society. The only way it could work would be if the government banned all recording equipment other than that controlled by the media industry (and the DMCA is certainly playing with the idea by banning you from distributing circumvention methods, given that a non-DRM-crippled digital camera is a perfectly decent circumvention method ). I just hope the media industry will fall apart due to its own incompetence before it comes to that.
"This message will self erase in 5 seconds" Power it with Sony batteries and it can explode like in Inspector Gadget. Poor Chief Quimby!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I dunno. I haven't read the article or even just looked at the pictures. But I'm thinking that the answer to your question is "Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black."
Information wants to be $1.98/lb.
Tell me, what would you rather look at: an LCD display, or something that is (for reading purposes) just like a sheet of paper? These are easier on your eyes, they're readable in sunlight, and consume less power (only on for changing pages)
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Make clothing from this material and see what it does to fashion! I'm a tech guy and shouldn't be allowing my brain to go here, but imagine: as with your dumb-ass you-paid-$2.99-for-what? ringtones, you'll be able to download patterns for your shirts, slacks and skirts! Hooked up to your cameraphone, hell, you could even be invisible!
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
It's not 1024*4. Although that is mathematically correct, it's not the correct way to interpret colour depth on a computer. 4096 in this instance is 16*16*16. There are 4096 colours available to the display because it is using a range of 16 values (4 bits) for each of the three channels, Red, Green, and Blue. 0 means none of that particular colour and 15 means the most intense shade of that colour. The three base RGB colours get combined with their various values of 0 to 15 to give new colours like shades of purple, or yellows, etc. When all three have the same value you get some shade of grey (black with all at 0, white with all at 15). Together all 3 colour channels use 12 binary bits (3 base colours * 4 bits for each) which gives you, in decimal numbers, 4096 different possible colours that can be expressed this way.
Someone thought of the trees!
...and replaced them with horrible, toxic, non-renewable phosphorescent chemicals and heavy metals!
DATABASE WOW WOW
So many comments about the small color range, but really this isn't a problem if the dot pitch is small enough. Printed paper only has 8 colors (16 if you include black in CMYB). Back in the day with only 4-16 colors we dithered to get a better range of colors, the look was similar to old comic books and for much the same reason. With 4096 colors to choose from dithering is very subtle and hard to notice. My 1998 laptop monitor only had 4096 colors, but dithering made it look fine. It's unclear to me whether most LCDs even today have full true 24 bit color.
Letter To Iran