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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."

41 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 91degrees · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, early adopters often get shafted. Rapid obsolescence is one of the costs of the bleeding edge.

    2. Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones. by Vanderhoth · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That being said, if it wasn't for early adopters, who end up getting screwed, I don't think some technologies would have taken off.

      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.

      Some companies use early adopters as their statistics to either continue or discontinue production of a product.

    3. 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
    4. Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones. by Belial6 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There is also the problem of some technologies always being bleeding edge. CPUs being the most obvious example. If you waited until CPUs stopped becoming obsolete in a few years, you might just now be considering your first computer. Display screens...Not so much of a problem. Although, that will depend on how much they scale. If the manufacture scales as well as CPUs have...

      You can skip the black and white while waiting for color.
      You can skip newspaper quality color waiting for magazine quality color.
      You can skip the single screen magazine quality color waiting for the dual screen clam shell color.
      You can skip the clam shell screens waiting for the six screen 'book'.
      You can skip the six page screen waiting for the 12 page book.
      You can skip the 12 first gen book waiting for the book that has sub 5ms refresh times.

      If there is ~18 months between releases, you could be looking at another decade before you get any kind of e-book reader.

      I don't think that most people have really thought out what they will do with this kind of tech. Books have been their selling point because it was the best that the tech could do in it's crude state. Future e-ink will be as similar to the Kindal as the Vic-20 is to Windows 7 connected to the internet.

      Even before they work on refresh rates, magazine quality color will wipe out the much of the non-"fine" art industry. When you can buy a poster size sheet of this, and it can maintain a poster quality picture without using any electricity, people will start reconsidering buying print. When you can buy a poster sized sheet for $50, you will see people considering it for use as wallpaper. When you can get this quality with sub 5ms refresh times, you will not only see people wallpapering with it, you will see it replacing TVs and computer monitors. Why bother mounting a fixed size TV to your wall when any or all of your walls can become TVs dynamically.

      I don't know how well this tech will scale in size and price, but I would suggest treating it like any other tech. If it does what you want at a price you are happy with, buy it now, and accept that things will bet better and cheaper in the future.

    5. Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Informative

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

      Seriously? I have a Nokia 770 and an iRex iLiad. The 770's TFT is 225dpi and is one of the nicest LCD's I've ever used (the nicest was an IBM monitor that was also 225dpi but was 23"). I can read books on it, but my eyes start to feel tired after an hour or so. Using it in direct sunlight is also a problem - the screen just looks white. The iLiad's eInk screen is only 166dpi, but it's significantly better. I can read outside in the sun for several hours without my eyes feeling at all tired.

      This isn't the sort of comparison like HD and SD, where you see them side-by-side and see a big difference, but only see the inferior one by itself and don't really notice, it's a difference that you notice even when you just use one of them.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  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 calibre-not-output · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If they make an e-ink screen that smells like an old book, I'll buy it.

      --
      Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
    2. Re:Bendable by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 2, Funny

      1) Buy ebook
      2) Cover it with nutmeg
      3) ???
      4) Sell it to calibre-not-output
      5) PROFIT!!!

      --
      "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
    3. Re:Bendable by drxenos · · Score: 3, Funny

      The new Kindle! Now with that Old Book Smell (tm)!

      --


      Anonymous Cowards suck.
    4. Re:Bendable by Ephemeriis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      I'm not sure how much I care about the ability to bend my books.

      Yes, paper bends... As I turn a page it bends... But bendability isn't really something fundamental to the function of a book. A book's primary purpose is the display of information.

      I mean... Is a magazine somehow better than a 500 page novel just because it's more bendable?

      Are hardcover books somehow inferior to paperbacks, simply because they're less bendable?

      I have a nook, and I read plenty of books on it. And I have never, ever found myself thinking you know what would make this ereader perfect? If I could just bend it...

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
  3. 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 Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No one makes money on Niche products by making them less expensive. They could find a way to cut a dollar off production costs and they'd still charge you an arm and a leg.

    2. 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
    3. Re:I've got a better idea by grahamsz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Probably the same reason you didn't have a computer until the mid 80s.

    4. Re:I've got a better idea by hanabal · · Score: 3, Informative

      interestingly enough. I recently did quite a bit of research into readers as my wife wanted one and the Sony one came out on top. The clearest screens and the best at reading open formats such as txt and PDF. I know /. is big on compatibility and openness so I thought I'd throw it out that at the moment Sony is the best. Sure you can get features like wifi and reading webpages on things like the kindle, but in terms of reading e-books, the Sony reader line is top notch

    5. 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.

  4. Apple could offer a model with eink screen ... by perpenso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    E Ink certainly has less to fear from Apple since E Ink could sell their screens to Apple just like they sell to Amazon, Sony, etc. If the eye strain issue becomes a concern Apple could simply offer an iPad version, or a new product derived from iPad that is more focused as an eReader and not a gaming/multimedia platform, with an E Ink screen. I think it is premature to say that Amazon and Sony has nothing to fear.

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

    1. Re:Apple could offer a model with eink screen ... by gartogg · · Score: 3, Funny

      Old Mcdonald had an Ebook reader, E-I-E-I-Ink
      And on that Ebook reader were overpriced books, E-I-E-I-who the hell cares.

      --
      I'm a concientious .sig objector.
  5. I predict in the next version by Orga · · Score: 4, Funny

    We'll be able to physically feel and turn the pages of these color books. Makes notes in the margin and who knows, with advances on the DRM front be able to actually pass these books onto our children!

    1. Re:I predict in the next version by Shados · · Score: 2, Informative

      I know you're joking, but taking notes in the margins has been there for a bit. Some of sony's e-readers have touchscreen display (which sucked in their first incarnation, but are better now), and let you annotate books at will.

  6. 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 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.

    2. 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.

    3. Re:Still not convinced about e-ink by digitalhermit · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hmm.. Could be eye strain caused by looking down your nose at the PC??

    4. 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
    5. 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.

  7. The actual cost is still more important. but... by Caue · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The reasons I love printed books are still overseen by the manufacturers: lendability, durability, exchangability, highlightexability, pencilnoteability, trashability (when I simply don't enjoy the book, like reading dan brown for the first time.. urgh.)

  8. 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

  9. 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

    1. Re:Why improve mono, just replace with color ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      I'm sure black text on white background will look so much better on color screen!
      Really now, you forget what *ebook* readers are meant for.

  10. 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.

  11. 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

    1. Re:Eye strain my hair ass by RapmasterT · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, people with a different opinion than you are lying.

      Yes, thank you for agreeing.

    2. Re:Eye strain my hair ass by Ephemeriis · · Score: 3, Informative

      You mean the LCD's I read off of 10 hours a day at work are completely unacceptable for reading now?

      Obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinions and preferences and whatever else... And there's certainly room for individual variation in how your eyes perform at different tasks...

      But, from what I've seen, most of the folks who claim that they're reading for 10 hours a day at work, aren't actually reading for 10 hours a day at work.

      If you actually look at their workflow, it doesn't generally involve staring at a screen containing nothing but text for a full 10 hours. Usually it involves looking at a screen running some kind of GUI that contains text elements. Usually it involves navigating through that GUI in order to display different text elements. Normally it involves looking at various images and diagrams in addition to text. Normally it involves periodic breaks to type or click buttons or answer the phone or speak with a co-worker or whatever.

      Which is actually pretty similar to what my workflow looks like. And in the average day I don't have any problem working off my LCD at work for 10 hours either. But that's a very different experience from when I'm curled up with a good book and reading for fun.

      When I'm reading for fun I'll attempt to remove as many distractions as possible. I will, hopefully, not be distracted from my book for many hours. I might very well spend 10 hours staring at text.

      I've been reading ebooks on various devices for years now. First a Handspring Visor... Then a Palm PDA... Then an assortment of netbooks and laptops and desktop computers... And now I'm reading them on a nook...

      And I'll tell you right now that when I wind up reading something engaging - literally staring at text for multiple hours with no distractions - on an LCD I definitely experience eyestrain. There have been days when I wound up doing literally what you suggest in your post - staring at text for 10 hours straight - and by the time I get home in the evening my eyes basically refuse to focus. It becomes impossible to read much of anything.

      No, I don't have some kind of degenerative eye disease... It's just eye strain, nothing more. And it can happen reading off of paper or watching TV or anything else. It just so happens that for me an LCD causes more strain than printed paper, or an e-ink display.

      Now, I'm not going to call you a liar simply because I disagree with you...

      And I personally agree that the Kindle has a less-than-wonderful display - which is why I bought a nook, which has better contrast in my opinion.

      But I suspect that you don't spend quite as much time staring at text on a screen as you suggested in your post.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
  12. Eh no? by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He was a LATE adaptor. If he had bought his palm pilot at the beginning, then he would have had one for a long time before the color version.

    And if you buy an E-ink device now, you are also a late adaptor. Bleeding edge was passed long ago.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  13. Why colour? by Rix · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How many books have colour in them anywhere other than the cover? I'm not going to pay a premium for that, so monochrome readers will continue to dominate until there's negligible price difference.

    Textbooks are unlikely to factor into the mainstream readers, which are optimized for reading novels.

  14. I disagree by Rix · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Primates who never read are not people, at least by any reasonable definition.

  15. Reader with textbook will become the mainstream by perpenso · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How many books have colour in them anywhere other than the cover? ... Textbooks are unlikely to factor into the mainstream readers, which are optimized for reading novels.

    E readers are in their infancy, we can't draw many conclusions from such a small market primarily populated with early adopters. The public at large has not "voted" yet. A reader that offers textbooks (elementary, high school and university) would probably become the mainstream reader. Color is used quite heavily in textbooks and a mono device essentially forsakes this market.
    --
    Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN

  16. I think it will be a while by sg3000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    I think it will be a while for a color Kindle. Admittedly I skimmed the article, but they sound vague about when E-Ink will have a color version available. On one hand, they're saying the color version screen will be available at the end of the year, but then they say:

    X: What can you tell me about your technical ideas for creating better color displays? Is adding color simply a matter of tweaking the company’s existing microcapsule technology, or do you have to go back to the drawing board and approach it in an entirely new way?

    SP: Even if we slightly describe it, we will probably reveal stuff that we are not ready to talk about. There is more than one approach, and exactly which one we will choose in the future, we don’t know.

    So they haven't picked an approach yet? That doesn't sound like they'll have something ready in the next nine months.

    The question of when they would have color technology has been bandied about by E-Ink since their inception. I read back in 2005 that Intel Capital invested in E-Ink with the hopes of getting a color-capable version and customers have always been asking for it. A color version is something they've been struggling to bring to market for a while. If they're still trying to figure out approaches, they could be a minimum of 1 years away for a prototype, and even longer for a color Kindle available in volume.

    So, in short, if you want a Kindle, don't wait for the color version. Or just buy an iPad :-)

    --
    Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.