Quote:
|
Eighteen months from now, will we be arguing over which is better for movies: LCD or Mirasol?
|
I doubt it. E-ink scales extremely poorly (production costs to size) and Mirasol even worse (even its inventor did not wish to spend much making a prototype beyond a tiny 5.7 inch screen - and tradeshows are when manufacturers flaunt even completely extravagant prototypes) for- don't get me wrong, interesting- but quite limited technology (poor color fidelity, washed out contrast, and only purely reflective compared to 3Qi).
If you consider that 3Qi was founded by an industry leader with connections using the existing infrastructure of a huge incumbent technology, the challenge of Mirasol of finding a consumer friendly place in the market are going to take longer than 18 months.
Mary Lou Jepsen describes the issue here in the first 1:20 minutes...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm8WoItVRn0
If you watch the entire film you get a better grasp at just what it took to take an already geared up technology to get to market and look how long it took Pixel Qi. Compare that to a device like this, a 9.7 inch e-ink screen drives the price to $1100, showing the poor scalability of e-ink:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/12/b...eaper-still-1/
---
As for the article itself, it abides by the scientific truth that light is light and that our eyes cannot distinguish their source once the refresh exceeds the chemical reaction which interprets that light. Reading
properly, 60 nits of reflected light is no different than 60 nits of emitted light, what becomes determinative are things like text rendering, contrast, viewing angle, and glare... all of which [comparable priced quality] LCDs can match, if not exceed present consumer reflective tech.
Put simply, suffering eyestrain seems to be more of a "you're doing it wrong" issue than anything else [bad habits of not blinking, not looking away, not matching ambient lighting, not using the right viewing angle, or reading on a low quality LCD] which the article expresses succinctly:
"reducing eye fatigue is less a matter of choosing a specific display than of taking short breaks from looking at the screen."