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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."

12 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones. by 2obvious4u · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeah, I bought a palm pilot and then one month later they announced the color version. I'm not getting bit by that again. I'll just wait for the color this time.

    1. Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones. by vlm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      DVDs for example might not have been, or have gotten, as big as they are now if it wasn't for the people that went out and spent thousands of dollars on the original players and hundreds on the original DVDs.

      DVDs were substantially better than VCR tapes.

      On the other hand, e-ink vs LCD, a big "eh".

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  2. Bendable by tsa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A few years ago I saw a demonstration by Philips on TV of a bendable e-ink screen. I think bendability is more important than colour. If the screen is bendable it can behave more like a real book.

    --

    -- Cheers!

    1. Re:Bendable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I think any real reader would be insulted by what you said. What matters is the text, not the smell of the physical media or anything so superficial. Among the things that I really like about ebook readers is the possibility of zooming, my mother was complaining yesterday that she couldn't read a book because the font was too small, and my grandfather won't be able to read due to sight problems for the rest of his life, if only there was a way to enlarge any text...
        That said, I'd really like a reader with a leather cover, perhaps with a wooden bezel, but that's just golden (ok, wooden/leather) lining, not the main point of a book at all!

  3. Still not convinced about e-ink by Space+cowboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Am I the only one who *doesn't* get eye-strain reading text on LCD's hour after hour ?

    I'm beginning to wonder whether the difference is actually Mac vs PC and the font rendering technologies. I use a Mac all day, reading text on LCDs, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Perhaps it's because the fonts look nicer (yeah, I know, it's an opinion, not a fact) to my eye on the Mac. I've lost count of the number of times I've spent days poring over PDFs and somehow managed to not notice this 'eye strain' that LCDs apparently cause. I actually *prefer* to read documents on the screen rather than printed out on paper...

    I'm also pretty convinced I'd get a lot more wound up over the slow refresh of the e-ink displays than the supposed eyestrain from LCDs...

    Simon.

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
    1. Re:Still not convinced about e-ink by vlm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      Visit an eye doctor / optometrist please. Seriously. People with healthy eyes don't have that problem. The problem is inside your eyeballs, not the monitors display technology.

      You can wait, like my grandma did, of course she's blind in one eye now. Or you can get it taken care of before you're permanently disabled. Annoying as starting glaucoma eyedrops might be, it beats the hell out of blindness.

      I'm serious, stop posting to slashdot about how wonderful e-ink would be, and fix yer eyes. Once you're blind, e-ink vs LCD vs CRT is all pretty irrelevant.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    2. Re:Still not convinced about e-ink by bonius_rex · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In my experience, the eyestrain thing seems to be correlated with age. When I was a younger man, I read all sorts of e-books on my palm pilot with no problem. That was maybe 10 years ago. Now that I'm a wizened old geezer (35), I can only read on my droid for maybe half an hour before my eyes fee like they're starting to melt, but I can read on my Kindle for hours and hours with no problem. The fonts on the Kindle aren't especially good, so I doubt it's font-related.

  4. Comics by Kenshin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is now the ideal platform for comics. If content is moved to this format, you won't have to deal with horrible collectors if you want to read back issues.

    --

    Does it make you happy you're so strange?

    1. Re:Comics by grahamsz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      s/comics/porn/g

  5. Another Reason to wait by TrippTDF · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There is obviously going to be some class of device that is part ereader, part computer and part media center, but, just as the smartphone market too years to take shape, the accepted version of this device is still years away, so don't waste your money on an iPad or Kindle just yet... wait for the market to mature.

  6. Eye strain my hair ass by RapmasterT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "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. "

    LCD's aren't suitable for digital reading? You mean the LCD's I read off of 10 hours a day at work are completely unacceptable for reading now? I have a Kindle which uses the wonderful to read e-ink display and the low contrast, washed out grey text on lighter grey background, with no backlighting, slow page draws, and previous page ghosting, is NOT a superior reading experience to a decent LCD. Not even close. To claim otherwise is just bald faced LYING.

    I do a LOT of ebook reading on my iphone, and on my kindle, so I actually do know the difference. e-ink displays excel in battery life and that is the ONLY category they are better than modern LCD

  7. Re:I've got a better idea by Jer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And when they're $125-150, you'll sit there demanding that they be $100 instead. Some people can never be pleased, and you very clearly seem to be one of them.

    You mock, but this idea is one of the basic foundations of economics.