What is Digg?85 Comments
- Sanitarium, on 10/11/2007, -3/+54I can bend my current LCD monitor.
It just won't work afterwards. Oh well. - supermajic, on 10/11/2007, -0/+34I can think of soooooo many uses for that. Wonder what the resolution/contrast is like? Can't wait until this picks up.
- bightchee, on 10/11/2007, -4/+33I'll consider buying one when you don't need protective gloves to handle it.
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+23"How does this only use power when the display changes and still emit light... or does it emit light at all? "
These are LCD panels: the fundamental principal of an LCD is that it doesn't produce its own light. All an LCD does is act like a fancy set of electrically-controlled window shutters. Each "shutter" has its own color mask (in order to produce ranges of color). In older LCDs (manufactured like the display on your computer), you need to electrically "refresh" the shutters every so often to keep them from closing and blocking out all light. Newer "E-ink" LCDs like this one only use power to set the shutters (effectively "locking" the shutter to one specific color). The problem right now is that "E-ink" LCDs have fewer "locking positions", which means they can't produce very many different colors (current LCDs can do at least 8-bit, 256 different positions for each color element; some LCDs can do 10-bit or more but are vastly more expensive). 4096 colors means that this "E-ink" panel has 4-bit color per pixel (or 16 "locking positions" on its shutters), which is pretty pathetic, but when you realize how much power you're saving with these devices, the trade off is worth it. - Mousse, on 10/11/2007, -3/+22Why bother? OLED displays are thinner, more flexible, more energy efficient, will be cheaper to manufacture, have better refresh rates, better contrast ratios, better color representation with 180 degree viewing angles and are transparent so they can be placed on windows or used as head mounted displays. If researchers can find a way to increase the lifetime of blue OLEDs you will see it becoming a dominant display technology in the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCkpnwRIQ6w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ufs9Wx0VXQ - asaturn, on 10/11/2007, -1/+18@matthewaaron:
diatoms? only works if it's light outside?
I would assume they are leaving out the fact that you need a backlight. so minus the backlight, the display itself only uses energy when changing the image.... which when used in most applications (computers, TVs, cellphones) would be the majority of the time. - hoppdawg, on 10/11/2007, -2/+18think you missed the point. this is simply significant because its large, full colored, and can bend
- matthewaaron, on 10/11/2007, -2/+16How does this only use power when the display changes and still emit light... or does it emit light at all? Display looks pretty dark...
- mrfish, on 10/11/2007, -0/+13Think of all the new surfaces they can place ads on now!
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -2/+13You just said "why bother" in your schpeel; LCD lifetime still trounces OLED lifetime. Until that tipping point is reached, we might as well keep manufacturing LCDs. LCDs work, they've been time tested, they're cheap to manufacture with the technology we have now. They will be phased out too, but OLEDs just aren't ready to do the job (yet).
- 1021, on 10/11/2007, -3/+12OLED FTW... in a few years.
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9"Slap a few..."
...less than one watt LEDs behind it and call it a night.
(Damn Digg, this is 2007, learn to correctly parse a damned < already) - JCSaint, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7This would be awesome as a newspaper replacement. Just subscribe, sync and go in the morning.
- devindotcom, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9Paper thin except for all that junk behind it....
Mousse ^ is right - OLEDs are the better technology for something like this. - AntBing, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7Car windows?
- shakin, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6"can display up to 4096 colours, wait what? so isn't that like 8 bit color? it looks very washed out in the light too"
8-bit color is 256 colors. 4096 colors is 12-bit color. It's not good enough for a TV, but it'll display photos reasonably well. Not perfect, mind you, but well enough for advertising. 12-bit color is more than enough to replace a newspaper with. Or imagine a phone book on one of these that sticks to your fridge. - geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Absolutely not. Creasing paper "breaks" it. Paper is still readable when "broken" because the distruptions are small. These pixels have to be rather gainly in size, so when you "crease it", it's broken. Plus you've got the backlight to worry about. But hey, the good news is, if you drop it, it's likely to survive the fall.
- GiggleStick, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Paper in Japan is over 200 times thicker than European & American Paper. Here we call it wood, also.
- loquax, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4IMHO, E-Ink will be the next holy grail of computer hardware. We've spent 1000s of years with books, inks, and the like and we need to really adapt this new technology so it is about as transparent and easy to use as a pencil and a piece of paper. One immediate application I can see for this thing is for low power e-books and laptops. I'd love to get one of these commercially...
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4"I don't think that the display is an LCD."
In the most fundamental terms, it barely squeaks by; Liquid Crystal Display. It uses a different kind of crystal however (in this case, organic polymers in solution). - Solstice, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3@waterdragon
That "book being a book" already consumed a lot of energy. Remember that just because you didn't expend the energy, it doesn't mean that nobody else did. Let's look at the basic costs of physical books:
1. The energy cost of creating the paper. That is, planting and cultivating the tree, cutting down the tree down, shipping it to the paper factory (usually by rail either before or after the pulping process), pulping, bleaching, and drying the paper (if new), and shipping it out again. If the paper's recycled, then the steps are the same, only replace the tree part with shipping the material for recycling to the paper factory.
2. The energy cost of pressing, cutting, and binding the book.
3. The energy cost of shipping that book to the distributor (remember that books aren't necessarily light - especially a lot of them). This will likely be by truck, rail, or all of the above.
4. The cost of shipping that book to you or the retailer. This will likely be by car, truck, plane, rail, some of the above, or all of the above.
5. The energy cost of the temperature-controlled warehouses and retail stores that house all of the books, including the cost of getting the employees to and from the warehouses and retail stores.
What's that you say, you get books from the Library? Well, then add in the cost of the temperature-controlled, electrically lit, building that houses all of the books for the lifetime of the book - plus the transportation cost of getting you to and from the library. What about the staff? Well, you'll need to add in their transportation costs. After all, someone's got to tend to all of those books sitting on the shelf using no energy.
If you consider that a tablet may last 5-10 years, then multiply the above energy by the number of books you'll buy in the next 5-10 years. It will probably require more energy to produce the books than it will to produce your tablet and light it for that length of time, and power your downloadable books. Why else do you think that it costs less to distribute music and movies over the internet than it does to make physical CDs and DVDs? - handler, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Think of having a LCD book, that had wi-fi in it and could download ebooks to each digital page. Awesome!
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3"This isn't an LCD; it's the first demonstration of large-scale color e-paper. "
"E-ink" is more specifically a kind of LCD. It's not the same kind we're used to (where we use thin-film transistors to power the twisting of a little crystal to allow light to diffuse through two opposing polarizing filters), but it's still an LCD. The "crystal" in this case is a polymer that changes its shape as current is applied, and holds its shape when current is stopped (thusly locking the image in place).
"it's lit by ambient light"
It /can/ be lit with ambient light, by putting a mirror behind it. LCDs can be lit this way too, they're called "transflective" LCDs, but the general consensus is they suck; they're still not bright enough to overcome the biggest problems of LCDs (mainly the fact that you're using two polarizing filters, which means half the light coming out is absorbed by the filters). You can add a backlight to these units the same way you can current LCDs and get a much brighter picture for a paltry sacrifice of a few watts to drive a few LEDs.
I have to admit, I'm damn excited about "E-ink" too, but one should understand why we should be excited and not mis-informed. - Trel, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Reminds me of the flexies from Andromeda
- WaterDragon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Think of going to school and stealing another kid's homework, electronically.
Oh wait...we're all adults here! - Rileyper, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I remember last year they created the first bendable LCD it wasn't color. Your title for this is inaccurate... but WOOT FOR COLOR
- WaterDragon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2"now, bookmark this page and come back in 25 years."
By that time, it will be as easy to find as that little note you wrote yourself on a slip of paper, 25 years ago.
(...when you are storing hundreds of TB of crap every week, in that brave new world) - thcobbs, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I don't know.... I like my e-ink Sony Reader a whole lot... and it goes two weeks between charges... even when actively reading ~4 hours a day.
- shakin, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Some people said that about the first full-color plasma displays.
- gllopc, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I'm excited about this; but this technology was "promised" back in 2003 and it's just now seeing the light of day. I wonder what happened? Idealy, the e-ink paper will be available to everyone for cheap and will be used to create newspapers which wireless update.
Minority Report anyone? - starsky51, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2come on.. it hardly takes a rocket scientist to predict something like this.
let me have a go. hover cars, brain implants and fat-free chocolate. now, bookmark this page and come back in 25 years. - thekms, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Its not paper 'till I can fold into a swan... [kidding]
Anyhow, its good that technology is progressing but this is so far from being a replacement for regular paper in any of our lifetimes. - directive0, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Another application of technology predicted by a Gene Rodenberry show.
http://www.jjambproductions.com/images/global%20link2.jpg - WaterDragon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1"Link not working"...exactly my point (see above^)....if that link was printed on a piece of ordinary paper, it would still be readable. See how limiting e-things are!
I had this friend....he spilled coffee on his ultra thin e-newspaper, and got electrocuted. We toasted marshmallows over his smoldering carcass, while we read our paper-papers.
;-) - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2I'm sure this is at the very least a decade away from practical use.
- CrimsonBlur, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Um, no. Using this technology you don't need to use multiple sheets anymore, you just have the display and it shows whatever you want to look at. Page 1-100 can be stored and viewed on one "sheet" of this "paper". So, for a magazine or newspaper publisher this would be much, much cheaper. When you purchase a subscription, they send you one of these displays (if you don't already have one) and then never have to pay any shipping or material costs ever again, all they do is send you an updated PDF (or whatever document format they use) every day, month, year, etc.
- asaturn, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1my old samsung phone (A640) had an OLED display on the outside to show the clock. seems useful for small applications (clocks, meters, etc) but for full picture... until they start using the full color versions and make them cheap, LCDs are here to stay.
- gheide, on 10/11/2007, -3/+4Tube TV's would be cool... or would that be cylindrical TV's??
- Ocelot13, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1how about you use the reply button in the original post next time? is it seriously that hard to comprehend how to use it?
- specialK16, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Can't wait for e-newspapers and magazines.
- msgyrd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Or you just plan for your ads being displayed in 12bit color and adjust it accordingly.
- halleyscomet, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2It's so sad. Flag makes a valid point about vaporware, and yet ends up dugg down because of his / her bad reputation. People are so used to seeing a bad impression of a ranting Microsoft fanboy that they digg him / her down by reflex.
Flag, I recommend you create another account for your insightful comments. - WaterDragon, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Does anyone actually imagine that these monstrosities of industrial pollution can or should replace paper books?
They will NEVER use less energy than a book that is sitting on a bookshelf, busy just being a book!
But they will waste a lot more energy and petrochemicals in the manufacturing process, compared to paper books made from renewable resources.
And they can malfunction and stop working, from ambient electromagnetic fields -- unlike paper, which can be read for thousands of years, and through all kinds of alien or rogue government EM attacks. - markross, on 10/11/2007, -5/+6I'll consider buying one when you don't need to be in a "clean room" to handle it.
- Topher06, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1While "bendible" I still get the impression from the picture that that is the maximum amount of bend they want to apply to it.
- Ahnteis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2True, but it's not LCD in the sense most people think of it. It's NOT meant to be used as a new monitor or TV. It's meant to be electronic paper. ;)
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Its not as thin as regular paper so its kind of pointless, granted the lcd bit itself if 0.3micrometres but the circutary needed to run it looks like several cm, and how much bend does it really have they only show 25degreese.
Even if they get it completely thin and bendable there is still the task of making it foldable and making it so you can write on it.
Still its nice to see progress. - JimV, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I don't care about color or backlight. Just gimme one of these screens hooked up to some flash memory in a thin, sleek case and call it an e-book reader. The battery life would be awesome, and it would be lightweight.
(The backlight is not needed. I could just happily sit near a lamp or in the sun and read it....like a real book.) - leftnut, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Why the hell is Mickey Mouse bending an LCD screen?
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1 A 42 inch monitor curved around you to take up your peripheral vision would be the ultimate gaming experience.
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