Another color technology.

[MikeFromHC]

I have an iron will so will not make any puns about this new method.

[Penforhire]

I'm curious about how much magnetic field is required. That seems harder to generate (and separate pixels) than E-ink's tiny parallel-plate electric fields.

[MikeRo]

Originally Posted by MikeFromHC

I have an iron will so will not make any puns about this new method.

I don't, so allow me.

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I'm curious about how much magnetic field is required. That seems harder to generate (and separate pixels) than E-ink's tiny parallel-plate electric fields.

I'm sure they'll iron out the difficulties.

[Bikeridr]

So long as they don't make any creasis

[fjtorres]

Sounds interesting.
However...
The main problem facing all these new display tech isn't the science or the engineering but the economics.
I've yet to see one that says: "We're as good or better than LCD--and cheaper..."
I'm sure that sooner or later, somebody *will* be able to deliver a quality color display tech that will displace LCD but I fear it won't be this decade. Pretty much everything I've seen is either stuck in the proof-of-concept stage or "Five years away".
Even Mirasol and color eink are no real threats to LCD for the forseable future when volume and price are factored in.
We've got a long wait ahead...

[BoldlyDubious]

The main drawback of this technology, when compared with electrophoretic displays such as E-Ink or Sipix, seems to be that the magnetic field needs to be applied to display the image, not only to switch from one image to the next. So, like LCD, this technology uses power all the time, making it not very useful for ebook readers.
What I would really like to see is an electrophoretic display with a refresh time of, say, less than 0.1s instead of the current 0.5s or more. This would make most of the activities that you usually perform with a laptop possible (e.g., checking or sending emails, reading and writing documents, file management, web browsing, ...) at a much lower power level than is possible with LCD-based PCs. I would gladly accept a black-and-white display and not being able to see video in exchange for a few days of battery life. In fact, if the system automatically puts the processor in low-consumption mode every time that the display does not need refresh (e.g., while you're reading), I expect that a very long operating time could be provided by standard laptop batteries. With the added bonus that a similar PC would be perfect for use outdoors and with strong ambient light.

[markbot]

instead of using black capsules, can't the e ink displays just use color capsules to create thousands of colors? they would have to increase the resolution but other than that it doesn't seem to be a technological hurdle to go from black/white to color. e ink already has a color e ink tech that uses a color filter, although it seems too washed out to me.

[GeoffC]

mmmm

rusty !

[garrybuck]

"The main problem facing all these new display tech isn't the science or the engineering but the economics."

Engineering is ALWAYS about economics....

[Penforhire]

Mark, you might be right on one approach but consider our E-ink resolution today is barely adequate in terms of pixels per inch. We can't afford to reduce it by a factor of four (assuming CMYK would be required. CMY alone might work, delivers only brown in inkjet printers though).

There are probably other challenges beyond the visual. Partial colors (greyscale for us now) requires a consistent fractional movement of the pigments. Scaling that down might make the results uneven. Also the electric fields of adjacent pixels might interfere with each other below some size.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by garrybuck

"The main problem facing all these new display tech isn't the science or the engineering but the economics."

Engineering is ALWAYS about economics....

That's what the teach told me in school.
But there is a difference between the economics that are the province of engineers--finding technology and procesess to make a profitable product--and the economics of the marketplace.
Plenty of profitable products fail because consumers prefer alternatives because of marketting, network effects, familiarity, or the product's positioning; none of these things are engineering but rather market economics. Just ask Microsoft (ZUNE, Kin), Pioneer (Kuro), Canon (SED).
Canon's failure to even get SED into production had nothing to do with the engineering and everything to do with the lack of enough customers willing to pay a premium for a product with the technical virtues of LCD and Plasma and the weaknesses of neither.
Any aspiring portable display tech has to face the market economics that exists right now, with LCD displays running good color and video real cheap and eink offering extreme battery life for static grayscale at decent prices. And that is going to be a tough row to hoe...