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New Color E-Reader Tech To Challenge E-Ink Dominance

Posted by kdawson on from the daily-prophet-graphics dept.

Technology Review reports from the Consumer Elecronics Show in Las Vegas that potential e-reader competitors to E-Ink are everywhere. The current market leader in e-book displays is greyscale-only, and it takes a long time to change the display ("turn the page"), so video applications are not possible. E-Ink says they will have a color display shipping by late next year, but it will be dimmer than the current greyscale and its response time will still be too slow for video. The wannabe competitors — Pixel Qi, Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Liquavista, and Kent Displays — all do color and some of them can do video (Pixel Qi, Qualcomm, Liquavista), and some of them (Pixel Qi, Kent) are shipping now.

5 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Do not want. by binaryspiral · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The beauty of grayscale eink is that it's very close to paper - making it easy to read for long periods of time. However, the transition time on the Kindle or other grayscale eink devices is long enough to be annoying. Making these transitions longer will decrease my satisfaction in them, making the display dimmer will make them worthless to me.

    If I wanted color, I'd hit an iPod touch, tablet PC, or laptop.

    Keep It Simple Stupid.

  2. Don't limit the perception of those screens! by sznupi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We see in the summary "e-reader", "e-book"...ignoring that those screens (well, at least Pixel Qi one, that I'm sure of) are great also as replacements for screens in netbooks (remember commercials of those depicting them on the beach, in the park or bright cafe?); generally any highly portable device.

    Those are the screens which were supposed to be in place all along. Finally we can have them. Who cares about e-book readers?

    --
    One that hath name thou can not otter
  3. Real book page turn times by Mr.+Freeman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't understand these complaints about the response times for the screens on e-readers. They're designed to be easy to read for the purpose of replacing paper books, not replacing LCD TVs or computer monitors. A real book doesn't have instant page turn times and there's a bit of "flicker" as the page flips up and over the current page. I've used a kindle before and it takes longer to turn a real page than for the kindle to refresh so I don't see a problem here.

    Seems like people are really bitching that e-readers can't be used for video. My question is why did you buy an e-READER if you wanted to watch VIDEO? You should have bought a laptop.

    --
    -1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
    1. Re:Real book page turn times by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You just expressed a view that is completely lost of marketing fools who see features features features as the only way to sell units. This is why every ebook reader also has an mp3 player in it.

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      How we know is more important than what we know.
  4. Sunlight laptop by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't care that much about e-readers, but hey, getting a laptop that could be viewed under full sunlight is just revolutionary for me.