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Color E-Book Displays Coming From E Ink Next Year

Posted by Soulskill on from the new-spectrum-of-displays dept.

waderoush writes "E Ink, which makes the monochrome electrophoretic screens used in the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader line, and other e-readers, is gearing up to supply manufacturers with the first color versions of its displays by early next year, according to an Xconomy interview with T.H. Peng, a vice president with Taiwan's Prime View International, which bought E Ink last year. Peng argues that E Ink has nothing to fear from the e-book apps on the Apple iPad and other devices with color LCDs, which, in his view, produce more eye strain and aren't as suitable for digital reading. Nonetheless, the company says its first color screens in 2011 will have newspaper-quality color, followed within a couple of years by improved versions that can handle magazine-style content."

5 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. I've got a better idea by Pojut · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about you first find a better process for making monochrome e-ink displays so the devices that use them aren't ridiculously priced?

    --
    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:I've got a better idea by Pojut · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There is a science to optimizing cost vs. production costs vs. demand. For niche product, the consumer's cost is going to be high.

      That's just it though...the only reason why it is such a niche product is because they are prohibitively expensive.

      If the readers dropped down to $150 average for a GOOD one instead of a no-name bad one, I would buy an e-reader tomorrow. I doubt I'm the only person who doesn't own one just because of cost.

      --
      Living With a Nerd
  2. Re:Still not convinced about e-ink by buruonbrails · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just read from E-Ink screen to feel the difference. I was skeptical about E-Ink too before having tried it out. It looks almost exactly like the real paper. So, now I can't imagine using LCD for prolonged reading when you can use E-Ink device or (even better!) good old paper book.

    By the way, another key advantage of E-Ink is energy consumption: it doesn't use battery when static, and uses quite a small amount of energy to redraw the page. Due to this feature, eBooks can run for weeks or even months on a single charge.

  3. Why improve mono, just replace with color ... by perpenso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about you first find a better process for making monochrome e-ink displays so the devices that use them aren't ridiculously priced?

    Why? Mono is probably a dead end technology. It may be better to get to color as quickly as possible and then concentrate on process improvements. A color Kindle would be a much better commercial product. It is difficult to imagine textbooks moving to electronic media without color. Regarding the possibility of reduced eye strain with mono, perhaps a reader app on a color device could choose to only show black and white for pure text content.

    --
    Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN

  4. Re:Still not convinced about e-ink by MozeeToby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    After an hour? No. After 12 hours a day, 5 days a week? Yes. If I've been sitting in front of a computer screen for several hours and close my eyes I can feel the muscles unwinding. It's not something I'm conciously away of until I look away from the screen, but the muscles of and around my eyes are constantly tense when reading off a monitor.

    As for the refresh rate of e-ink, for me it is almost exactly equal to the time it takes my eyes to travel from the bottom to the top of the page. The only time I notice it is if I need to go back/forward several pages, then the slow refresh is frustrating since you have to wait for a page to display before you can move to the next one.