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UK Company Demos Color Video Animation On Electronic Paper
sweetpea86 writes with an update on color e-ink screens. From the article: "Plastic electronics company Plastic Logic has demonstrated color video animation on a flexible plastic display, which it claims is the first example of an organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) driving electronic paper at video rate. The demonstration proves that the potential uses of electronic paper extend far beyond monochrome text-based e-readers to more sophisticated tablet-style devices that can run color video, while still keeping power consumption low."
SlashGear also took a look at it and has a short video of the animated e-ink display.
It'd be cool if the video link had... Ehm... A link, tho.
"Last month, Plastic Logic announced it was abandoning plans to manufacture its own e-readers, deciding instead to to license its flexible display technology and software to OEMs, system integrators, and device manufacturers."
Good, there is nothing worse than a company who makes something interesting, then tries to beat the market in a game they dont understand. Just make the shit and sell it to all the other people who have design and marketing departments larger than your entire company, and let them deal with Q public.
They could win if everyone wants it, and if a reader fails they might have plenty of others to sell it to, instead of all of the eggs in one basket, and raffled off to the richest patent troll.
Whats a newspaper?
Being 33 years old, every time I pick something up that I am told is a newpaper, all I get is 1 paragraph of a day old story and 4/5th of a page full of ad's for old lady underwear and flat out scams for gold, homes and used cars... I have given up on finding these fabled papers of news.
No, but it's getting close. I have a first generation eInk device, and it takes about 0.9 seconds to do a refresh, so it's managing 1.1fps (and in 16 shades of grey, not colour). The jump from that to 12fps is a lot bigger than the jump from 12fps to 24fps (cinema speed). More importantly, they can have the pixels switch from one colour to another directly, while the earlier ones needed to go via white, which would have made video flickery at any speed.
As they say in the video, it's not 'true video speed', but it does mean that you can have interactive UI widgets on an eInk device. 12fps is enough, for example, to be able to type into a text field without seeing irritating lag. It's enough for buttons to respond as soon as you click on them. It's enough for simple animated effects. I had some pop-up textbooks when I was a child that managed simple animations of things like the inside of a jet engine by having you pull tabs to make parts of a picture move - it's more than enough for that kind of thing, which could be very useful for textbooks.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Whats a newspaper?
Being 33 years old, every time I pick something up that I am told is a newpaper, all I get is 1 paragraph of a day old story and 4/5th of a page full of ad's for old lady underwear and flat out scams for gold, homes and used cars... I have given up on finding these fabled papers of news.
You need to read better newspapers. Find yourself a quality broadsheet.