Color jetBook Color for comics

[andyh2000]

So far I'm a bit disappointed with my jetBook Color - it's slow, the PDF reader is under-featured, and the screen is very low contrast unless you have plenty of sunlight or artificial light. However, there is a niche where I think it works quite well - comics (as long as the speech bubbles aren't too small). Based on this test I might re-subscribe to my favourite childhood comic, digitally of course. Finally, eink comics are here!



Yes the colours are muted compared with on an LCD (although the jetBook is a bit more saturated in real life than it looks in the photo) but I think it's good enough.



The page is taken from prog 1766 of 2000AD, a long standing British SF comic available from all good newsagents or at 2000adonline.com

Andrew

PS Taken in sunlight especially for Ken Maltby

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

So far I'm a bit disappointed with my jetBook Color - it's slow, the PDF reader is under-featured, and the screen is very low contrast unless you have plenty of sunlight or artificial light. However, there is a niche where I think it works quite well - comics (as long as the speech bubbles aren't too small). Based on this test I might re-subscribe to my favourite childhood comic, digitally of course. Finally, eink comics are here!

Attachment 82158

Yes the colours are muted compared with on an LCD (although the jetBook is a bit more saturated in real life than it looks in the photo) but I think it's good enough.

Attachment 82159

The page is taken from prog 1766 of 2000AD, a long standing British SF comic available from all good newsagents or at 2000adonline.com

Andrew

PS Taken in sunlight especially for Ken Maltby

So basically you seem to say it is a good device as long as you stick to reading comics only - that will save me a lot of money ...

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by Beryll Snyder

So basically you seem to say it is a good device as long as you stick to reading comics only - that will save me a lot of money ...

Comics and certain types of PDF technical document that you want to read straight through (especially if you're willing to crop the margins off first before putting them on the jetBook). I wouldn't recommend it as a general eReader at the moment.

Andrew

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

Comics and certain types of PDF technical document that you want to read straight through (especially if you're willing to crop the margins off first before putting them on the jetBook). I wouldn't recommend it as a general eReader at the moment.

Andrew

That is sad to hear.
I don't understand why Ectaco does not use Android. There is so much software /apps out there and they just would have to offfer the platform. Let people buy what they need individually/additionally. Would be easier.

[ProDigit]

I am under the impression that the jetbook is a great general purpose reader, as it can display most pdf files perfectly, and they are readable!

The reader may be a bit heavier than standard readers, and the pages may flip pretty slow, but in my mind, there are only few devices that can display a PDF resolution (the color, kindle dx, are a few of them)

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

I am under the impression that the jetbook is a great general purpose reader, as it can display most pdf files perfectly, and they are readable!

The reader may be a bit heavier than standard readers, and the pages may flip pretty slow, but in my mind, there are only few devices that can display a PDF resolution (the color, kindle dx, are a few of them)

Having used it a bit more now my fondness for it is growing. I think the main weaknesses are the darker screen and lower contrast than I'm used to from the latest E-Ink Pearl screens, the slightly slow page flip speed (although that varies with the document), the missing web browser and the under-featured document viewers (especially not being able to page forward or back when you're zoomed in to a PDF). Of those, the last two are definitely fixable by a firmware update, the speed might be tweakable a bit, and we're stuck with the screen. For a first generation of a brand new (to commercial devices) technology I think it's not bad at all.

Back on the subject of comics I've now learnt to use the ImageMagick "convert" command, and I've found boosting the colour saturation of an image to the extent that it looks silly on an LCD monitor helps a lot on the jetBook.

Andrew

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

Of those, the last two are definitely fixable by a firmware update, the speed might be tweakable a bit, and we're stuck with the screen. For a first generation of a brand new (to commercial devices) technology I think it's not bad at all.


Andrew

I totally agree, so everything depends on how fast they come out with firmware updates ...

[netboy]

How do you guys read your comics? Just leave the jpegs in folders? Covert to cbz then convert to epub in calibre? Just wondering if there is a differnce.

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

Back on the subject of comics I've now learnt to use the ImageMagick "convert" command, and I've found boosting the colour saturation of an image to the extent that it looks silly on an LCD monitor helps a lot on the jetBook.

Andrew

Try forwarding that to Ectaco!

They might be able to tweak their drivers to display the colors more truthfully, making more use of the brightest colors in their palette, and reducing the use of the (more abundant) matte colors.
This practice is widely used in laptops. Sony in their vaio laptops calls it xbrite or something....



Doing so they would not make use of the full color palette, and images may seem more grainy, but the benefits might outweigh the disadvantages!

It might be nice if they had a patch so users can decide if they want to keep the original 4k color palette, or use an eg: 2k brighter color palette.
I mean, even an 8bit 256 color palette would still look better than all the other ebook readers which have 8bit black and white only.

The only other thing it could affect,is when reading a text that does not have completely black letters, eg: in some color text books, blu-ish, or greyish text is used,that might deform a bit in shape due to the color palette; but I hardly think that would be an issue.

[mod186k1]

Hi Andy,
I think your photo is not color-balanced. I tried to improve the screenshot using the most black (the border) and the most white (the background of speech bubbles).
Can you please tell me if the results is more near to what you real see?

Thank you

Originally Posted by andyh2000

So far I'm a bit disappointed with my jetBook Color - it's slow, the PDF reader is under-featured, and the screen is very low contrast unless you have plenty of sunlight or artificial light. However, there is a niche where I think it works quite well - comics (as long as the speech bubbles aren't too small). Based on this test I might re-subscribe to my favourite childhood comic, digitally of course. Finally, eink comics are here!

Attachment 82158

Yes the colours are muted compared with on an LCD (although the jetBook is a bit more saturated in real life than it looks in the photo) but I think it's good enough.

Attachment 82159

The page is taken from prog 1766 of 2000AD, a long standing British SF comic available from all good newsagents or at 2000adonline.com

Andrew

PS Taken in sunlight especially for Ken Maltby

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by mod186k1

Hi Andy,
I think your photo is not color-balanced. I tried to improve the screenshot using the most black (the border) and the most white (the background of speech bubbles).
Can you please tell me if the results is more near to what you real see?

Thank you

I'm afraid we're on a bit of a hiding to nothing trying to talk about colours like this. I'm viewing this forum post on an LCD monitor - I have the brightness turned down and colours muted a bit so it doesn't feel like it's burning out my eyes too quickly (I spend 8 hours a day staring at it). So I see my version of the photo. You'll have your monitor calibrated differently and will see a different version. All I can say is that the colours are a lot more muted than on an LCD display, but (particularly if you boost the brightness/saturation with software before loading onto the jetBook) they are probably good enough for comics. It also depends how much ambient light you have around. LuBiB seems to have a house that's lit up with floodlights - his screen will look better than mine as I have relatively dim lighting at home.

Additionally, if you've balanced the photo so that white is white then you've probably made it less representative of reality as the jetBook Color screen background is far from white under normal conditions.

Andrew

[m0rdant]

Can you post your method of reading comics - are you converting to epub or pdf, or just loading the jpg's? Another method? I've been trying to convert to epub with Calibre but the results are way too big. Would love to have a page fit the screen.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by m0rdant

Can you post your method of reading comics - are you converting to epub or pdf, or just loading the jpg's? Another method? I've been trying to convert to epub with Calibre but the results are way too big. Would love to have a page fit the screen.

The ones I have are PDFs to begin with, so I just read them as PDF.

Andrew

[ProDigit]

PDF!

I don't know about epub, but in PDF it autozooms to fit screen.

I really miss CBR/CBZ support on this!

[m0rdant]

Thanks, I'll try converting to PDF and see if that solves my problem - yeah a native cbr / cbz reader would be great too :-)