iriver e-book reader powered by Adobe Reader LE, more photos
 

Details are sketchy at this point, but dareview was able to shoot some more photos of the iriver e-book reader which was first revealed by Engadget @ CES 2007 last week.

Did you notice one photo depicts "Powered by Adobe Reader LE"? Although I admit to not knowing exactly the details of this software, it's fairly safe to say from reading the specs that the iriver will support encrypted PDF files.

Related: iriver announces new reader - watch out Sony, iriver enters the e-book business

Digital Editions would have been nicer.

Did you notice the stylus?

No sign of independant action screens...

Two notes I picked up from the dapreview article: it's a touch-sensitive screen (you can turn pages by swiping a finger), and it runs on regular batteries. :D

I don't think I like the dual screens. Heavier, more expensive, less room for a big battery, etc. One page with the Sony Reader or a pda works great in my opinion, unless there's some special interface needed on the other screen. Just to try to match the book experience with two pages seems silly to me.

Could work nicely for annotations: text on one screen, notes on the other. That was a thought I'd been kicking around for quite a while. :shrug:

Yes, annotations would be easier this way. Not needed for an eBook reader per se, but great for an Info Pad. :D

Did you notice on the midddle photo a listing of other portable devices? It seems that they are planning a full line of both single and double screen models.

I would suspect that the Adobe (Acrobat) Reader LE would also have the ability to reflow documents when you change the font size. They have made a major push in recent years with their Acrobat line of products to enable as many Section 508 capabilities as possible. (Section 508 is the US Governmant mandate for products that are usable by people with disabilities.) Among these items are elements for sight imparied (i.e.: ability to make the font size larger and the ability to have the text flow in correct sequence to a text-to-audio application.) It would not be a major step for them to implement a text-to-audio feature. In fact, it would be in keeping with the past iriver product philosophy.

Interesting. I guess what we need is something like rockbox but for e-ink readers: http://www.rockbox.org/
Text-to-audio is an interesting feature for disabled people. As for text reflowing ability, I think it has something to do with the new PDF files that Adobe are working on. Reflowable PDF would be the best file format for all these readers...
It also seems that PDF is getting more and more a standard format across all these e-ink readers...

When the original specs of the Sony Reader were published they listed 64 MB as the user area. When the first version was released (ok, the current version) we had over 91 MB available. So in theory there are 27 MB that they could reclaim to implement the next expansion of the firmware/embedded code in the Reader. Since they already have Adobe Reader support it is something that I would expect them to implement to all existing Readers without charge.

3 more images right here
http://www.iriver.co.kr/event/ces200...ent.asp?mode=5
seems pretty nice. Dual screen feels natural for a book, i think. There shall be a movie somewhere on the page but I can't find it.
*edit
http://www.iriver.co.kr/event/ces200...ent.asp?mode=4
here it is (does not work i firefox!)

It looks much nicer on these screens. Touch screen display is nice too, but I wonder what the autonomy for this device will be...

Thanks for the links, CTH!

Ick, I don't like the huge border around the screen (more border = less screen area to device size ratio). On the other hand, if the device is touch screen then, maybe it will have a higher resolution and can display native PDF's more naturally? Of course, the touchscreen portion could just be an overlay across the actual screens display medium. Another cool thing about iRiver devices, I've noticed in the past that their devices tend to be tweeked a bit more by enthusiasts to do more than advertised (iRiver mp3 player with LCD screen was flashed to support playback of compressed video files, could have simply been flashed with an upgrade for a different region, but cool nonetheless).

It's good to see more eBooks on the horizon!

vapor?

-bowerbird

Nothing in the shops here in Korea at all. I'm guessing still conceptual or prototyping or something. Come to think of it there are no ebook readers at all here as far as I can tell. And you know just how much Koreans love technology and all things new.

I'll be seriously looking at these if/when they get released. Hope the price will be good too.

micro