Questions about iLiad's capabilities and whatnot

[Asterra]

These are newbie questions. The information available on this device tends to assume a certain measure of related knowledge, and I have very little. So here goes.

1) Supported formats. After maximizing the iLiad's compatibility with book / document formats in whatever ways that may be accomplished, which reasonably common formats remain unsupported, and/or which reasonably common iterations of formats are not adequately supported? In other words, if I were to buy/acquire some ebook at random, without paying any attention to its format, what are the odds that it would be something I could never get working with the iLiad, and what format(s) would that be?

2a) E-ink. The latest and greatest E-ink seems to be this "E-Ink Vitaplex", with most new and competitive devices boasting said E-ink, but apparently not the iLiad revision 2. The notable advantages of the new E-ink include things like refresh time (which the iLiad apparently still wins by making up the difference in device response time), brightness, and grayscale bit depth. First, how is it that the iLiad is achieving 4-bit grayscale when even the Vitaplex E-ink is supposed to be capable of only 3-bit?

2b) On the issue of brightness, which is perhaps my single greatest concern when it comes to these devices, are the listed figures accurate? 32% for the old, 40% for the new. I'd rather have the brightest (most paper-like) screen possible. Otherwise I may as well be staring at an oldschool graphic calculator.

3) I don't even know what reflow is, but it sounds like something the Sony Reader lacks and the iLiad may possess. Could someone elaborate?

4) Resizing images. There are all sorts of ways to resize JPG (or whatever) images. Nearest-neighbor is quick, easy, and ugly. Bicubic is much better. It's a safe bet that most JPGs the iLiad will be asked to display will be of much higher resolution than its native display, so the question of image resizing is important. It can be ugly, such as IE/Firefox's built-in scaling algorithm for images, or acceptable, such as the one employed by Windows Picture And Fax Viewer. Either way, it's a good thing to be aware of before plunking down 700 bucks.

Guess that about covers it for now. Thanks in advance!

[DaleDe]

iLiad achieve 16 level gray scale with a custom controller that no one else has. It is truly 16 levels, not dithered.

[wallcraft]

Most images in e-books don't have to be reduced in size for the 768x1024 iLiad screen. However, color images are converted to 16 grey levels. The result is variable. I enclose an example, which worked well. Your web browser may reduce the size of the screenshots (which is a copy of the screen bitmap, not a photo), if so click on it to get the full size. One screenshot is from the MobiPocket Reader and the other from FBReader (icons along the top), however I am using an optimized MOBI file (based on a LIT e-book) and many MobiPocket files have very small images than this.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Asterra

1) Supported formats. After maximizing the iLiad's compatibility with book / document formats in whatever ways that may be accomplished, which reasonably common formats remain unsupported, and/or which reasonably common iterations of formats are not adequately supported? In other words, if I were to buy/acquire some ebook at random, without paying any attention to its format, what are the odds that it would be something I could never get working with the iLiad, and what format(s) would that be?

Anything without DRM (encryption) is supported or can be "format shifted" to a supported format. The only DRMed format supported is Secure MobiPocket. A DRMed format that has been broken is exactly like a DRM-free file, but removing the DRM may not be legal where you live. The most widely broken format is Secure LIT (for MS Reader), and many people buy Secure LIT because it is not secure (to get a DRM-free e-book).

The format that most people mistakenly expect to be supported is Adobe e-books, which you might see described as Secure PDF. These are not supported, and this is the most common library e-book format. On the other hand, password protected PDFs are supported.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Asterra

2a) E-ink. The latest and greatest E-ink seems to be this "E-Ink Vitaplex", with most new and competitive devices boasting said E-ink, but apparently not the iLiad revision 2. The notable advantages of the new E-ink include things like refresh time (which the iLiad apparently still wins by making up the difference in device response time), brightness, and grayscale bit depth. First, how is it that the iLiad is achieving 4-bit grayscale when even the Vitaplex E-ink is supposed to be capable of only 3-bit?

2b) On the issue of brightness, which is perhaps my single greatest concern when it comes to these devices, are the listed figures accurate? 32% for the old, 40% for the new. I'd rather have the brightest (most paper-like) screen possible. Otherwise I may as well be staring at an oldschool graphic calculator.

There is a discussion of the iLiad screen on iRex's i-to-i blog. I now have a Kindle, and I would say there is little difference in quality between Vizplex and iLiad. The Kindle does images well, even with only 4 grey scales, but the iLiad's 16 grey scales win here. Vizplex is faster at screen updates than the iLiad, but the iLiad can do partial screen updates (which might be possible with Vizplex, but are not used on the Kindle so far as I can tell). I compared the MobiPocket Reader on both devices, and the Kindle's page turn is 1.5x to 2x faster than the iLiad's. When using ported X11 applications (like FBReader), screen updates can be very slow on the iLiad. These can be made faster by customizing the application for the iLiad.

[Asterra]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

One screenshot is from the MobiPocket Reader and the other from FBReader (icons along the top), however I am using an optimized MOBI file (based on a LIT e-book) and many MobiPocket files have very small images than this.

These are excellent images, and do a particularly good job of impressing on me the quality of the text on this reader.

If there's any possibility of seeing an example of a portrait-style JPG image of a resolution higher than the iLiad's (such as something scanned from a comic book at a typical scanned resolution, like 1180x1700)? This would be a good way of gauging how the iLiad commonly handles such images. There will be situations where I have collections of hundreds of such images, to be viewed in sequence based on the alphanumeric chronology of their filenames.

Thanks everyone for the great responses so far. While I definitely retain some misgivings over this reader - price, old E-ink technology, and a early '00s design which sinks the image into the bezel rather than keeping it neat and flush - it's pretty clear that its advantages are formidable. What's left on my plate is to see what's been done to tackle the Adobe Ebook problem, and to figure out the specific repercussions of the caveats about PDFs formatted as "letter" or "A4".

[Asterra]

Okay, I think I understand the complications involved in reading A4 / letter PDFs. So my next couple of questions/requests... ;p

1) (How well) does the iLiad "reflow" A4 / letter PDFs to something more compatible with its size/resolution? Could somebody post an image of a typical example?

2) I've read that there are also options to eliminate the white border and do some zooming or whatever, to compensate for the incompatibilities between unmodified A4/letter PDFs and the iLiad's display. How seamless is this optional functionality (ie, do you basically turn it on and it's good to go until you're done reading that document?) It'd be great to see some visual examples of this process in action, too.

Thanks as always. Hopefully this information will be helpful to other prospective buyers, too.

[Adam B.]

The iLiad can't reflow PDF's. The only documents it can reflow are text, html, and mobipocket (and everything FBReader supports).

A4/Letter PDF's can be quite readable when you crop the margins and use the full screen viewer. Take a look at some examples I made here.

[DigiDirk]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

The iLiad can't reflow PDF's. The only documents it can reflow are text, html, and mobipocket (and everything FBReader supports).

Don't be too negative, Adam.

PDF's are not supposed to be reflowed...

They are supposed to show the document in every aspect the original author wanted it to be like.

And the iLiad does a good job when it comes to zooming in.

Dirk

[Asterra]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

A4/Letter PDF's can be quite readable when you crop the margins and use the full screen viewer. Take a look at some examples I made here.

That looks great. Much better than I was fearing.

So the only nagging thing I'd like to know about regarding that full screen mode is how seamless / automated it is. Right now, I'm still not quite getting it. I grasp the theory that you could take a PDF page, eliminate the needless borders, and use the 768x1024 display to show what remains. But is this something that needs to be finetuned on a case by case basis? Would that be up to the user or the software? What I mean is.. every time I load up an A4 document, would I have to zoom in a few pixels at a time until it looked good (or, dare I dread, for every _page_?), or are there built-in settings which automate this process? Or, better still, can the iLiad software automatically detect the presence of superfluous text-free borders and truncate them, eliminating the need for the user to perform anything so painstakingly hands-on?

The casual user in me feels that since the Adobe PDF is such a ubiquitous file format, it should be a given that methods for handling said format should be maximally enabling. But the cynic in me wants to ask questions about it before making a rather big purchase. I'm grateful that there are people willing to help. Thanks!

[bojan]

Originally Posted by Asterra

2b) On the issue of brightness, which is perhaps my single greatest concern when it comes to these devices, are the listed figures accurate? 32% for the old, 40% for the new. I'd rather have the brightest (most paper-like) screen possible. Otherwise I may as well be staring at an oldschool graphic calculator.

Here are my thoughts on brightness issue:

With indoor and artificial lighting conditions, some people will tell you that the background is not any more gray then the recycled paper from some newspaper or paperback book -- I have to say that I haven't seen such a paper yet, the background on my Iliad is much grayer, it can't even be compared. With extra lighting you can get slightly better result, but you will have to use some heavy duty light bulbs for your room, or use over head lamp, which is not always possible, and also you will likely get some glare. In fact your comparison with graphic calculator would be quite close in this kind of conditions.

With natural lighting the things improve dramatically and you could compare the background with the paper from a paperback book, but not in any way with the white sheet of paper.

Unfortunately this is the state of the technology at the moment. Also some people are more sensitive to this background issue than others. I have to say that I have adapted to it over time, and I have no trouble in using my Iliad, but more whiter background would be my biggest wish for the display improvements.

[wallcraft]

I can't detect a difference in quality for text between a Kindle (with Vizplex) and the iLiad. The iLiad's background is actually lighter grey, and the text is equally black on both.

I agree with bojan about indoor lights. I am perfectly happy with it indoors in normal artificial light, but it is much better indoors when using a full spectrum lamp. I was amazed at how much difference this makes.

[nekokami]

The iLiad doesn't automatically detect and eliminate the borders, but the process of zooming is very nicely implemented: you use the stylus to draw a line across the part of the page you want to view, then switch to "continuous" mode to scroll down one screenful at a time. When you zoom, you zoom for all pages in the document. The only time you have to tweak this is if you're dealing with a scanned document with unbalanced margins.

[Asterra]

Awesome. That is a nice implementation (I would say very intuitive), and certainly the next best thing to automation. Of course, part of me wants to argue that it can't be too difficult to detect featureless borders, or use presets, but eh.

It's really sort of odd that the iLiad seems to be this mixed bag of commendable software / modifiability, unsurpassed specifications, and ancient technology. Still, I think I have enough to go on now. Thanks, everyone.

Now to figure out options for things like Japanese text displaying / dictionary / IME. ;p

[grayfox]

If you have an iliad you should get Adobe Acrobat by whatever
means you have at your disposal. ( Hitting up Aunt Mary,
robbing a convenience store, etc...)

One can take a large format pdf, say Letter size, and from within
Acrobat save the rascal as a Html 4.0+CSS file.

After fiddling with the css style sheet and defining an iliad
sized page in Acrobat ( and setting some default font sizes )
you can produce a very readable pdf for the iliad.

I have able to turn illegible (on the iliad ) documents into
a readable document.

Jerry