Video: 20-minute Interview with Eink at IFA 2011

[Joseph R]

Originally Posted by Ankh

It might be a quirk of mine, but I would gladly trade various slab fonts and "display" varieties for good old fashioned serif favourites used in pbooks.

Newspapers have been using sans-serif for ages; probably something to do with the quality of the ink; did not seem to bother readers very much, if they even noticed!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Jetbook Colour does look very interesting — colour 9.7" display. I don't know if it's actually shipping yet.

Earlier reports said only a 600x800 pixel display, but their own web site says 1200x1600. Oh - I wonder if they're being very sneaky and giving the sub-pixel resolution instead of the colour pixel resolution. Given than I haven't heard of any black and white eInk displays above 200dpi, that would make sense of the numbers.

Ataco has a reputation for fudging the facts about their readers.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Papi

? As far as I understand, each color "pixel" is really composed of 4 monochrome pixels so 1200*1600 monochrome = 800*600*4 subpixels color

Exactly so. The colour filter over the top turns four Greyscale pixels into 1 colour pixel. I think the video mentions a RGBW filter:

RG
BW

Where the W is white. Since each colour sub-pixel reflects 1/3 of the light of a white pixel, adding the colour filter reduces the brightness by half. Actually, I suspect that each colour pixel reflects a bit more than 1/3 of the light of a white pixel, so the brightness of white (when all pixels are showing their colour) will be a bit better than half the brightness of the plain screen.

I was very dubious of this technology, but it is looking better than I'd feared. It may prove good competition for other colour bistable displays after all.

[cHex]

Since this is a reflective technology rather than a backlit one, I don't see how it can "reduce brightness" any more than red ink, for example, reduces the brightness of a magazine page by coating a portion of it. Won't the filter simply absorb the applicable wavelengths present in the ambient lighting?

Likewise, how can the filtering reduce resolution if the color is a matter of filtering the exact same microcapsules as before? Would it be in the sense that border microcapsules will not be all filtering the same color, giving the appearance of a fuzzier edge?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Joseph R

From the official site:
Where you talking about this one article?

Yes, I think that is it. I had forgotten how much I had forgotten.

My best recollection is that I read the above site and thought: "Ugh, 600x800 on a 10" screen, but maybe color mitigates it a bit."

Then I did some googling and think I found something saying there were two models, one 1200x1600 B&W and the other the same thing with color filters in front giving 600x800 color.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by cHex

Since this is a reflective technology rather than a backlit one, I don't see how it can "reduce brightness" any more than red ink, for example, reduces the brightness of a magazine page by coating a portion of it. Won't the filter simply absorb the applicable wavelengths present in the ambient lighting?

Likewise, how can the filtering reduce resolution if the color is a matter of filtering the exact same microcapsules as before? Would it be in the sense that border microcapsules will not be all filtering the same color, giving the appearance of a fuzzier edge?

An individual pixel in a reflective display can (at best) reflect 100% of the light falling on it. By adding a colour filter, you are deliberately absorbing some of the light instead of reflecting it. This reduces the brightness of the display.

The resolution isn't dependent on the microcapsules, but on the colour filter in front and the TFT driving plane behind the microcapsules. Each colour pixel is made up of four sub-pixels, so the colour resolution is half the black and white resolution.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by cHex

Since this is a reflective technology rather than a backlit one, I don't see how it can "reduce brightness" any more than red ink, for example, reduces the brightness of a magazine page by coating a portion of it. Won't the filter simply absorb the applicable wavelengths present in the ambient lighting?

Red ink does reduce the brightness of a white page. That is how it works. It absorbs the part of visible light that is not red and reflects the red part of the light. That is necessarily less bright, although perceived brightness is more complicated than just total light.

For a reflective display, a red filter lets red light pass in both directions and absorbs non-red light.

Originally Posted by cHex

Likewise, how can the filtering reduce resolution if the color is a matter of filtering the exact same microcapsules as before? Would it be in the sense that border microcapsules will not be all filtering the same color, giving the appearance of a fuzzier edge?

If you have green text on a white background, the capsule(s) behind the green filter would show white for each "color pixel" that is part of a letter. The capsule(s) behind the red and blue filters for the same "color pixel" would have to show full black. The capsule(s) behind the clear filter for the same "color pixel" could be anywhere between full white and full black depending on the compromise between unsaturated and dark you are will to make. So you only have one fourth as many pixels for drawing one color text as you would have on a monochrome display. You could play some tricks around the edges of the letter using blue and red, but it probably not look good on a reflective display.

[Barty]

In any case, that color display in the video doesn't look good. I'd much prefer an improved gray scale display.

Can they get more than 16 levels? A lot of covers on my k3 just look like blobs of black ink.

[beachwanderer]

Thanks a lot for this video!

[afv011]

Thanks for the video.

There's some more interesting stuff about eInk here.

[djulian]

Originally Posted by Lbooker

I think that in the video mister E-ink exagerates when he claims that Pearl is better than the average paperback, and that Vizplex is better than a newspaper. I noted that he does not promise hardback quality in the future.

I'm curious to know what the contrast difference is between a paperback book and a hardback book.

[djulian]

Originally Posted by Lbooker

Which means that in his interview, mister E-Ink forgot to tell us that the color filters lowered the contrast so much that they had to make the pixels larger, thus lowering the resolution. No wonder the new Sony reader offers no real improvement over last year's model : E-ink is in a dead-end.

E-ink is a dead end like books are a dead-end. It doesn't need massive, unending upgradability in order to be a very useful, very satisfying technology.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by djulian

I'm curious to know what the contrast difference is between a paperback book and a hardback book.

Could be the quality of the paper. The paper that looks really white gives blue fluorescence for the UV light that it absorbs, and that would improve the contrast.

[Jen Barlow]

There are a number of excellent questions on this board. We would like to respond to them. Given the duplication in the questions across a number of similar boards, we would encourage you to navigate to our Facebook page where we have responded to these and a number of other questions that you may be interested in.

https://www.facebook.com/media/album...45410395552132

[molman]

Originally Posted by Jen Barlow

There are a number of excellent questions on this board. We would like to respond to them. Given the duplication in the questions across a number of similar boards, we would encourage you to navigate to our Facebook page where we have responded to these and a number of other questions that you may be interested in.

https://www.facebook.com/media/album...45410395552132

Jen can I ask why you are using Facebook and not your own forum/service. No offence but I detest the use of Facebook for these things.