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E Ink Unveils Color E-Reader Display
Kensai7 writes with news that E Ink, the company who builds the displays used in Amazon's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook, and Sony's Reader, has launched a color version of their e-reader screens. It will first be used by a Chinese company called Hanvon Technology. Other companies will be watching and evaluating how well it works before integrating it into their own designs. Quoting:
"Unlike an LCD screen, the colors are muted, as if one were looking at a faded color photograph. In addition, E Ink cannot handle full-motion video. At best, it can show simple animations. These are reasons Amazon, Sony and the other major e-reader makers are not yet embracing it. Amazon says it will offer color E Ink when it is ready; the company sees color as useful in cookbooks and children’s books, and it offers these books in color through its Kindle application for LCD devices. Sony is also taking a wait-and-see approach."
E Ink cannot handle full-motion video. At best, it can show simple animations.
That's true, and it applies to EInk in general, not just color EInk, so...
These are reasons Amazon, Sony and the other major e-reader makers are not yet embracing it.
Really? So Sony PRS and Amazon Kindle must be presently using the magical pixie dust display technology?
It says the big US companies are waiting to see whether it will be useful for cookbooks and children's books, but wouldn't the color aspect of it have an immediate market with the magazines and periodicals that those same companies are pushing so hard to distribute on their devices?
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
I am quite annoyed by clicking on articles that lead to either pay-wall sites or sites that require registration. Could you please ban such articles and not refer to them from any slashdot post?
..embracing color. Children's books and cookbooks? That's it? Really? What about textbooks? I can see significant increase in e-reader use for textbooks if they had color capability. Not every HS and college student is going to have the luxury of having a pad/slate device. Color provides an extra dimension of information without physical space, pretty useful IMO!
... they want to sell what they have on their shelves and it's way too early to make all the buyers go out and rebuy a planned-obsolescence upgrade. If they wait, they won't anger all their christmas customers with finicky "i'll wait for it" choices.. you know.. for the good of the product.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
Amazon says it will offer color E Ink when it is ready
AKA, once it can display full-motion videos ^W ADS.
We've heard something similar about today's half-baked HTML5 ^W^W adobe flash replacements from the likes of youtube.
For some reason, here I was thinking we made it out of black and white to color a few decades ago. If we as the human race keep taking steps backwards, then we will never have a working warp drive by in Star Trek. Ehhh, I guess we are due for another world war anyway.
WWPD - What Would Picard Do?
The fact that ANY consumer product (nevermind a whole category) has succeeded with black-and-white screens is remarkable, and points towards to some hard to beat advantages of the E Ink technology: they were strong enough to outweigh the fact that on first impression, the screens looks cheap.
With the addition of color (and the assumption of steady improvement to contrast and color gamut), it's entirely possible that e ink will be wrapped on all kind of things -- dashboards, airport signage, ATMs -- where power is an issue.
Would love to eventually see my desktop monitor made with E ink.
I feel that finding ways to allow the eInk to display motion (without leaving a ghosted image behind)would a more important next step. I would rather have an eReader be able to do that than display color, as you wouldn't have to see it flash the screen every time you need to "turn" a page. After that color would be the next most important thing to me, even still I don't see myself ever needing color on an eReader. But, I wouldn't want to be the one blocking the advance of technology as I'm sure I would eventually see a use for, just like all sorts of people have found a use of having 641K...
Maybe a color eInk screen will be found on all of our little smart phones someday, with an optional back light.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Virtually indestructible waterproof color e-ink tablet with WiFi and replaceable scratchable surfaces, so I can toss it around like a book.
Bonus round: built in drivers to act as a USB display.
... quantitatively, what does that mean? How fast could it update a whole screen? If it's faster than 1/10 of a second, that may not be enough for full video, but it's probably at least fast enough to feel responsive.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This just in to the /. news room; The TSA has announced that E Ink Color E-Reader Displays are now banned from domestic flights worldwide. The little electronic eInks might be related to toner in toner cartridges and thus a threat to the safety and sanity of the worldwide local traveling community, at large. A spokesman for the TSA had this to say; "I don't know what all is in there, but those colors could be made to look like a powerful explosion or some such thing, or another. Heck, I just don't like the look of that contraption. It looks like some sort of controller for human zombie robots or somethin'."
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Color or not I just want an E Ink reader that can properly display any PDF. Currently there are none that I know of. There are many that display PDF's (eg. Kindle) but all of them suck at it (no search, no resizing, can't show the PDF in its original form, etc, tons of problems with all of them).
Sure, the iPad or whatever will do it but the battery life sucks on those and the compared to E Ink the display does too.
FTA:
“Color is the next logical step for E Ink,”
Really? I'd have thought that "refresh rates that aren't measured in epochs" would be the next logical step.
Perhaps they've improved since the last time I picked one up, but it was depressingly unresponsive. That, and the poor contrast ratio, was not really grabbing my attention.
I love the idea of e-ink; using ambient light is both low-power and easier on the eyes. But I don't feel the urge to get one with the current state of the (commercially available) art.
Haven't they had relatively low power, daylight-readable color screens for a while? The question is how their power drain compares to e-ink. When the Notion Ink Adam comes out, we'll see if it's a viable replacement for a real e-reader.
From what I know, B/W E-Ink doesn't do smooth animations and full motion video either, so I don't understand why Sony or Amazon are not jumping on using color E-Ink displays.
I think you got to understand the target market better. If you want full color, high resolution, smooth animation/video displays, then use LCD or OLED technology. If you want an e-book reader with color graphics and simple interactive graphs, then use E-Ink.
I think the biggest failure of E-Ink will be to try and compete with LCD. They are already years behind in being able to match what LCD or OLED technology can offer, so if Sony or Amazon is waiting for E-Ink to match those spec's then they will be waiting for a good long time. I don't believe E-Ink will ever replace or compete with LCD or OLED, period. It should be used in cheap pupose driven devices not expensive jack-of-all-trade devices.
Make the damn thing so that we can cut it to a desired size and easily control it without needing an expensive built-in or external controller and everyone who builds arcade cabinets will finally have dynamic marquees that looks almost as real as the real thing.
LCD panels may be more bright, but you can't easily cut that. Normal marquees may be backlit but it's not quite the same as LCD.
Plus, we'll be able to have slightly rounded dynamic marquees, instead of being limited to flat ones like with LCD.
Amazon's interest in the technology involves replacing their current tech which can't do video either. Say what you will about Amazon, but their philosophy and strategy around Kindle is clear and consistent. Battery life and paper-like contrast and visibility are king. Barnes and Noble went LCD, but Amazon so far seems that they are sticking to E ink. The fact they haven't moved is either because there's some unspecified hit to battery life, the black and white contrast is degraded, or the price is too high for their price point.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Although I love my Alex eReader, I am little disappointed that e-paper is being used as a display instead of being used like paper like it was originally conceived.
The basic idea was that you'd get a special electrostatic printer that you'd load with a ream of e-paper and print out your documents as usual, then, when you're done with a document just return it to the hopper so that some other document could be printed on it. It was supposed to be the ultimate recyclable paper.
I suppose that it was never really likely that e-paper would reach the price point where such a thing would be reasonable, but it was an interesting concept.
Even though people complained that computers, not only didn't hearken the arrival of the paperless office, but actually increased the amount of paper that was used, I think that the trend is going the other way and people are beginning to print less and less. So, the demand peak for a product like this has likely passed and few would see it as a valuable option.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
I've been waiting for years for color e-ink to mature enough to make a good digital picture frame. Something cheap, lightweight, with great viewing angles, daylight readable, non-reflective, awesome resolution, takes no power in between refreshes - heck, you could set it to only switch 1x day and run it for a year on a small battery.
Sounds like they are getting closer - keep at it, guys!
Yesterday's technology available... TODAY!!! ~rimshot~
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Registration/pay wall fail.
Most magazines are very, very fussy about color quality. The muted aspect of the Kindle would probably mean tailoring any images destined for it, a lot of work. The iPad LCD display (or other upcoming tablets) is a lot more like a computer display in terms of how you process images.
So I don't know that many magazines are chomping at the bit for devices that use the new eInk either.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whoever wrote this article is an idiot. "E-Ink" is a high-contrast, bistable liquid crystal display. Please refer to an active-matrix TFT as such. There are many types of LCDs, all with different properties.
because I doubt consumers will accept colors that don't jump out at them having been used to color LCD screens for so long.
I guess it really depends on how muted those colors are, if its like the screen is always dark or fuzzy its DOA.
I won't touch the new Nook (color LCD) or an iPad simply because battery life and usability out doors is so compromised.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Uh ... really? ...
Whoever wrote this article is an idiot. "E-Ink" is a high-contrast, bistable liquid crystal display. Please refer to an active-matrix TFT as such. There are many types of LCDs, all with different properties.
I'm afraid if anyone is being an idiot, you're it. The "LC" in LCD refers to a family of substances which are completely absent in E-Ink displays, because E-Ink displays use fundamentally different principles of operation.
LCDs are planar sandwiches of electrode arrays, polarization filters, and LC material (and, in the case of color LCDs, color filters). LCD pixels are tunable light filters: by manipulating the electric field passing through LC material, it's possible to twist the polarization of the light in a controllable way. Combine with known fixed polarizers between the light source and LC material and the LC material and your eye, and you get a controllable intensity filter.
E-Ink displays use microcapsules filled with charged ink particles suspended in a fluid. Positively charged particles are one color (say, white) and negative the other (black). By applying an electric field one can attract/repel the particles such that the top surface of the e-ink display facing the user has either white or black ink.
The main similarity between the two is the use of electric fields to control the pixels. Aside from that, everything else is different. E-ink is purely a reflective technology and does not use liquid crystal material at all. LCD is a controlled polarization technology using LC material.
Just how does one bist it, exactly?
I like the idea of having a light weight e-Reader which I can carry reference books on. But most of my reference books have colour diagrams, illustrations and figures. They really don't work in black and white - or at least are not as visually appealing, which is important when you're reading something.
I'm not sure why the NYT thinks not being able to play FMV is a problem. I don't want to watch video on an E-Reader; I want to read books. I've already got devices which I can use for watching videos while on the move - though I seldom use them for that - but they suck for reading because of the glossy reflective displays. I just want a device for reading books on the move. In colour.
If Amazon were to bring out a new Kindle with a colour display I might actually buy the damn thing.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
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While E Ink is pretty cool for readable displays in all sorts of bright light conditions, interferometric modulator display looks pretty cool as something that has full color and soon full motion video as well. Uses the same technology as peacock feathers, butterfly wings, etc. It refracts ambient light to create the color the same way natures does i.e. biomimicry.
I think it'll be an interesting race. Note I'm not in anyway related to Qualcomm. I just stumbled across this while reading more about E Ink.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N19ivyaQ5Mc&feature=related