Pixel Qi announced it is busy creating a battery powered HD tv!

[ProDigit]

Many know the company PixelQi is doing a great job in making their screens nearly as effective as e-ink when taking the screen outside, while in darker environments you have a fully color display that can display movies at an acceptable framerate (unlike e-ink where the framerate takes several hundreds of milli seconds).

Pixel Qi was aiming their technology originally for netbooks, to make them more battery efficient, and easier to read in light environments.
But now it seems they have desire to apply the technology to a HD TV as well.

Though I know it has little to do with ebooks, but what would you say if you have a 1280x720 (or perhaps a 1900x1080) pixel monitor, that can display books as well as play back movies, and can run off of batteries (successfully lowering power usage over regular LCD TV's and monitors)?

I thought it was a nice topic of though, especially if you know that the costprice of their first screen will be aimed at $100!

If that means the $100 like the $100 EeePc, or perhaps the $100 OLPC XO, you could expect a $250 street price at initial release, and dropping to $175 after about a year later.
Or perhaps they meant the consumer (street) price of $100?

Anyways, with less new products to look forward to, these PixelQi screens might be one of the things that could brighten up 2010 for a while I'd say.

Another nice thing is the newer Atom processor,which could go hand in hand with these types of screens!
An EeePc with the newer Atom and PixelQi's screen, could go from 4 hours to 8 hours of battery life, without adding a significant cost to the price tag; while still being more environment friendly.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

Many know the company PixelQi is doing a great job in making their screens nearly as effective as e-ink when taking the screen outside, while in darker environments you have a fully color display that can display movies at an acceptable framerate (unlike e-ink where the framerate takes several hundreds of milli seconds).
...

They are doing a great job of promising stuff. But, September is here, and there are no real products announced.

Next we'll be hearing, that they are raising money for cheap interstellar flights, based on ingeniously tweaked existing technology, with availability within a year or so.... Bleh. Where's the beef?

[jankovicgood]

They already showed working prototypes, I thought by this time we would be hearing major producers like Asus, Acer, HP anouncing new netbooks with their screens, but still nothing.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by Sonist

They are doing a great job of promising stuff. But, September is here, and there are no real products announced.

Next we'll be hearing, that they are raising money for cheap interstellar flights, based on ingeniously tweaked existing technology, with availability within a year or so.... Bleh. Where's the beef?

What about OLPC's XO? The screens Pixel Qi is showing us now are essentially the second generation of what was initially developed and employed by the aforementioned product.

[carlobee]

hmmm. great product although as usual, we have to wait for reviews on this one. sounds really good at first anyway.

[emellaich]

Originally Posted by Sonist

They are doing a great job of promising stuff. But, September is here, and there are no real products announced.

Next we'll be hearing, that they are raising money for cheap interstellar flights, based on ingeniously tweaked existing technology, with availability within a year or so.... Bleh. Where's the beef?

well, as I understand it on those long interstellar flights space is at a premium. We need plants (hydroponics, you know) for Oxygen as well as food. However, I'm afraid beef is too expensive (ecologically). Only vegetarians need apply.

So, the first demo screens roll off the fab line at the end of May. We need manufacturers to look at the screens and decide to build products around them. We need to design said products. We need a bit of a decision making process: right design? market big enough? how much should we invest in inventory? where should we make them? And then we have some negotiations with all interested parties in there somewhere. Finally, we manufacture the things. BTW, who wants to go first with a new tech?

Anyway, May 28 to August 28 is three months. Not really much time at all. I'd be surprised to see products before the fourth quarter. More realistically look towards next year for most of the products, with maybe a first generation offer or two this year.

[Dylrob]

FWIW the interviews would suggest that device makers don't have to actually build the device specifically around the display. The screens being manufactured now are supposed to be more or less plug and play with most existing 10" devices...

[Grrrrr... it won't let me post the video with a time skip! Okay, just jump to around 2 minutes and 19 seconds.]

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by emellaich

... More realistically look towards next year for most of the products, with maybe a first generation offer or two this year.

Yep. They showed a couple of videos of an LCD with a backlight switch, told you it's the best thing since Wonder Bread, and went on to continue to look for early-stage capital.

I do want to believe it, but the vapors are starting to nauseate me. By the time they bring this to market, the rest of the world would have moved on.

I've been listening to these guys for a year now, and they are still pretty much where they were when it started.

This should be bigger (if it was real,) than the Apple tablet, yet all you hear from Asia is Apple tablet talk, but nothing about Pixel Qi. And Pixel Qi is hardly tight-lipped. Which tells me, there is little interest, from those who have presumably seen the screens.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by Sonist

I've been listening to these guys for a year now, and they are still pretty much where they were when it started.

A year is nothing really. Did you know electrophoretic displays (which eInk is a class of) were initially developed decades ago?


Anyway, to take a quote from their own site...

"We have been refining them all summer to ramp to mass production in Q4 2009"

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by Dylrob

A year is nothing really....

No, the tech is certainly not new. I meant they've been pumping the market for over a year, basically looking for $$$$.

The problem is, not many seem to have bitten, or at least not many who can put up the money. Which ought to give one a pause in expectations.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by Sonist

No, the tech is certainly not new. I meant they've been pumping the market for over a year, basically looking for $$$$.

The problem is, not many seem to have bitten, or at least not many who can put up the money. Which ought to give one a pause in expectations.

Perhaps if it were any other time. But this economy has brewed an air of caution and conservatism. Plus one of the rumors we are hearing is that the two biggest names in netbooks, Asus and Acer, will not be announcing any new models until next year.

[ProDigit]

Partly because they are waiting for Windows7, and the newer Atom with GPU+Memory controller on chip.
Then they need to develop drivers for it (probably).
So I suspect the nearest window for netbooks will be starting from 2010 (a month or two after Intel's newest Atom becomes public).

They could pair the technology with ARM processors, but they are much more expensive than Intel's Atom processor, and perform much worse.
We'd be comparing a $600 ARM netbook to a $500 Atom netbook.

As for the HDTV, I guess it'll be the same technology, only placed in TV's instead of netbooks.

That they haven't manufactured any PiQi screens yet, is probably by the time they where ready for their first batch to go into production, some modifications, ideas, and improvements came along.
I guess they chose to wait until their first released product would be a good product.
If they had put their first screens into production, by now they would have buyers and company connections for their newer models, and perhaps some cash too.

The con would be that they would have less for R&D, and that their second gen product would probably take longer to be finished.
They have a couple of high profile jobs open at the moment, but I don't feel called to fill in the gap.
Especially not when one (or both) of them include moving to Taipei (or something).
I wouldn't manage to survive there, unless someone spoke English.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Dylrob

What about OLPC's XO?

Last I heard they were losing tons of money and laid off half their staff.

[Abecedary]

Originally Posted by Sonist

No, the tech is certainly not new. I meant they've been pumping the market for over a year, basically looking for $$$$.

The problem is, not many seem to have bitten, or at least not many who can put up the money. Which ought to give one a pause in expectations.

It certainly doesn't help that the netbook market (which is what Pixel Qi was primarily aiming for initially) seems to have reached the saturation point in the past month or two. I agree that they've done a good job promoting their product, but the simple fact of the matter is that there isn't a single device out there that uses them yet. The technology looks promising, but I won't buy into the hype, nor believe their pricing claims, until products actually start shipping. Remember that the XO was supposed to be <$100, but it ended up costing twice that....

[emellaich]

Originally Posted by Dylrob

FWIW the interviews would suggest that device makers don't have to actually build the device specifically around the display. The screens being manufactured now are supposed to be more or less plug and play with most existing 10" devices...

Yes, you are right that it should be easy to design around. However, I would suggest that there is no appropriate off-the-shelf designs. You could just plop them in a netbook, but I'm not sure that really gets the sweetspot of the market. You could put them in an existing e-book hardware form factor, but again, I think these units bring other things to the table and you would probably want a different arrangement of buttons/software -- possibly to play video, for example.

The closest ready-to-go designs might be some of the tablet PC designs. Perhaps newly energized using Pixel-Qi, Windows 7, and multi-touch. However, realistically I expect to see new form factors and thus, new designs utilizing these. And these new designs will take some time. Just look at the evolution of the TechCrunch tablet as an example of the time it takes.