Aura HD Kobo Aura HD

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by david_e

Granted, my first Kobo was the Mini, but the only issue I've encountered is italics showing as bold in my preferred font. It's annoying, but nothing more.

Is this just an issue with one font or many? To me that would be a pretty big issue and much more than annoying.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by berklon

If you're talking .pdf's, then yes. But .epub's wont need to be bigger to take advantage of increased resolutions of the device. It's graphics/images that increase in size to take advantage of increased screen resolution - text is text no matter what the resolution. Your current epubs will automatically look sharper on this new device.

For many of my epubs the cover takes up more space than the text already. Add a few images and the text often accounts for less than 10% of the epub filesize. The size of the cover and other images will just keep increasing as screen resolutions increases.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

For many of my epubs the cover takes up more space than the text already. Add a few images and the text often accounts for less than 10% of the epub filesize. The size of the cover and other images will just keep increasing as screen resolutions increases.

That's just very poor formatting by the publisher. With minimal knowledge anyone can run the cover through a graphic program and compress it correctly so you don't see any difference in the quality. There's no reason a cover for an epub needs to be over 100kb in size, and most of mine are well below that.

Most other small images for fancy chapter headings or dividers are usually under 10kb each. Again, if done properly to not waste space for no reason.

[TechniSol]

GeoffR,

You're just going to have to start buying "big boy" books with more words and less pictures!

I hadn't thought about books with images taking up so much more room, guess I don't have (m)any with maps, diagrams, images, etc. Thanks for pointing out something that I was clueless about. Always nice to see something from a different viewpoint, I couldn't for the life of me imagine why HTML would take up more space because of higher resolution displays...

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

It is interesting that the Aura comes with 4GB onboard storage. As the screen resolution of readers increases ebooks are just going to get bigger and bigger, I don't think 2GB will be enough for most people for too much longer.

Huh?? Unlike a video file where higher resolutions result in larger files though improvements in compression technology have kept that size increase down, I can't see how an increase in screen resolution would affect the size of the ebook. I read the same ebook on multiple devices with resolution varying from 360x480 to 2048x1536. What I do notice is the higher resolution devices do better at displaying characters since they can spend more pixels on each character but that has no effect on the size of the ebook. The only way I can see a massive increase in the size of ebook would be adding more images to the ebook. An example would be more comics and manga being published in epub format rather than CBZ/CBR format. Otherwise, I can't see any good reason for the majority of ebooks adding masses of images.

Regards,
David

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

There's no reason a cover for an epub needs to be over 100kb in size, and most of mine are well below that.

While I agree there are lots of covers out there that are a larger file size than needed. With current cover specs required by many retailers (1400 pixels minimum width and likely to increase over time) 100kb or less isn't realistic for many of the images out there.

[simplyparticular]

I think this was developed for the manga market, which would be very important to Kobo's success in Asia. 4GB, larger screen, higher resolution.

They're being smart and also aiming the marketing at the Sony users who miss the 900/950 and the premium devices. Perfect timing given the laments about Sony dissing the front lighting.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

That's just very poor formatting by the publisher. With minimal knowledge anyone can run the cover through a graphic program and compress it correctly so you don't see any difference in the quality. There's no reason a cover for an epub needs to be over 100kb in size, and most of mine are well below that.

Most other small images for fancy chapter headings or dividers are usually under 10kb each. Again, if done properly to not waste space for no reason.

I've seen ebooks where they use the same vignette for each chapter heading and a separate image has been included for every chapter. The same for ebooks that use a triple bullet to separate segments and used a separate image file for each instance.

Just plain sloppy work in my not so humble opinion.

Regards,
David

[Latinandgreek]

I am really tempted to get one. I can't wait for Chapters to get them in so I can check them out.

[PeterT]

I have to say that some cookbooks I have borrowed from the library were around 100 megabytes on size and this was traceable to many large images. Exploding the ePub and resizing the images made them far more palatable.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

While I agree there are lots of covers out there that are a larger file size than needed. With current cover specs required by many retailers (1400 pixels minimum width and likely to increase over time) 100kb or less isn't realistic for many of the images out there.

I've seen one ebook from Apple where the cover image was close to 90% of the book size. Yes, it looked better when I looked at the cover image on my iPad but overall, was the change worthwhile? Not really since I really don't spend much time gazing at book covers.

Just for the heck of it, I converted a 4000x6000 image of decorative cherry blossoms to a 1400x2100 image. Dropping the jpeg quality to 75% when saving gave me a 185KB file. The original image clocked in at 13.4MB but then the camera is set to maximize quality when saving .jpg format -- I have to justify having dual 32GB cards in the camera somehow.

Regards,
David

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm saying the software most likely will be buggy. I've read the threads and the software is buggy on all prior Kobo models.

Ah, I must have inverted the meaning by inverting a couple of words.

[MrDoug]

Wow.. lots of pesimistic opinions out there.. Picky, Picky.. I wonder why.. sheesh.. I think it will be awesome..

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I've seen ebooks where they use the same vignette for each chapter heading and a separate image has been included for every chapter. The same for ebooks that use a triple bullet to separate segments and used a separate image file for each instance.

Just plain sloppy work in my not so humble opinion.

Regards,
David

That drives me nuts too and I see that often in purchased books. I'll go through and delete all the identical images and use just one for all chapters and drastically cut the size of the book once compressed.

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

While I agree there are lots of covers out there that are a larger file size than needed. With current cover specs required by many retailers (1400 pixels minimum width and likely to increase over time) 100kb or less isn't realistic for many of the images out there.

But the image within the epub itself doesn't need to be the full 1440x1050 pixels. It can be 800x600 and the code in the book tells it to display the cover at 100% of your reader's screen and it looks just as good as if it was 1440x1050 pixels. For the few minutes you actually see the cover, it's silly to include huge images thinking it will "look" better on an e-ink display. Even on a color display, the same coding can be applied and no one would see the difference if done correctly. You can use the cover as your screen saver while the reader is asleep and it will still look perfect.

[MrDoug]

I would say.. buy it, try it, and then you can give a honest, fair and intelligent opinions.. If you do that you may like.. if you don't like it.. sell it.. <smile>