Increased Contrast Highly Plausible...

[Server]

Upon viewing the exquisite video from our friend Hussein,
I noticed something that I didn't catch before. When fast
forwarding pages (touch and hold screen) there is a quick
and temporary darkening of the text. When I repeated this,
I noticed that the contrast was markedly improved.
Therefore, one could say that a firmware implementation
of the same 'text enhancements' could be a reality!

Of course this could also be achieved by manually editing your
PDFs to a thicker/bolder font without changing font size.
But no one would want to do this manually, so a native font
set could be added to the next firmware IF sony is listening.

Unless I am missing something, I'd be happy to hear why this
could or could not happen.

[davidspitzer]

I have a prs-505 and I am very happy with it - I was excited to see the 700 in a borders last night next to the 505. Much to my utter dismay, the contrast on the 700 is really poor and even more so when sitting next to the 505 - I would have been really disatisfied if i had ordered one of these online to replace my 505. Swiping my finger on the screen and a backlight just does not seem like a fair trade for a quantum loss in readability

[dhbailey]

That's why Sony is keeping the 505 alive alongside the 700 -- the 700 isn't meant to replace the 505. It's for a slightly different audience.

But it's also important to keep in mind that the changes in the 700 aren't only the swipable page turn and the backlight. the processor is faster, the ui is faster, it can handle much larger collections on the memory cards much better, you can take notes which will transfer back to your computer if you wish, it handles PDF files better than either the 500 or 505, there are more font sizes to choose from.

I'm not trying to convince you to buy one -- if you're happy with the 505 there's absolutely no need to change. I had a 500 and there is very little difference in screen contrast between the 500 and the 700 so for me it was a no-brainer. And with the special offer on getting a Sony Card (take $150 off the first qualifying purchase) the 700 cost the same as a 505 for me. I can well understand your reluctance to "side-grade" to the 700.

But then so does Sony, which is why they have stated that they will continue to market the 505 along with the 700, whereas when they brought out the 505 they pulled the 500 off the market.

[Kurashi]

I think the flash of increased contrast you're referring to is actually the anti-aliasing delay, but I could be wrong. Anti-aliasing smoothes the edges of fonts and other objects into the background behind them so that they don't look out of place and also so that when the font/object is scaled to smaller sizes it will actually appear more readable. Unfortunately, if the text is already at a smaller size, the anti-aliasing might make the font appear thinner than it is and the anti-aliasing may even bleed into the body of the font/object effectively fading the entire text somewhat. In those cases the larger font sizes should make the text appear darker than in the smaller sizes, but I would certainly like to see some more font rendering settings on the 700. A lot of it can be avoided by optimizing the files for the 700 before putting them on there, but I haven't personally optimized any of my books yet since I just got my reader yesterday.

Would much rather see an official Sony firmware update than a community patch. Hoping Sony had a good enough Christmas that they kick it up a notch and crank out some needed updates for the readers and the library software.

[Wetdogeared]

Originally Posted by Kurashi

I think the flash of increased contrast you're referring to is actually the anti-aliasing delay, but I could be wrong. Anti-aliasing smoothes the edges of fonts and other objects into the background behind them so that they don't look out of place and also so that when the font/object is scaled to smaller sizes it will actually appear more readable. Unfortunately, if the text is already at a smaller size, the anti-aliasing might make the font appear thinner than it is and the anti-aliasing may even bleed into the body of the font/object effectively fading the entire text somewhat. In those cases the larger font sizes should make the text appear darker than in the smaller sizes, but I would certainly like to see some more font rendering settings on the 700. A lot of it can be avoided by optimizing the files for the 700 before putting them on there, but I haven't personally optimized any of my books yet since I just got my reader yesterday.

Would much rather see an official Sony firmware update than a community patch. Hoping Sony had a good enough Christmas that they kick it up a notch and crank out some needed updates for the readers and the library software.

I'm fairly new to this forum, but I have never heard of optomizing files before loading to the device. Would you, or someone else, please enlighten me as to how this can benefit the appearance of books on the reader? Thanks.

[Kurashi]

When I mentioned optimization, I was mostly referring to document formats which tend to make extensive use of layout features and such, like PDF files. Pages in PDF files are supposed to be a 1:1 copy of what you should see when that page is printed, either in a book or off your printer. It includes the white/blank margins around the borders of the page, the font size, the font weight, the graphics, etc. On top of this, most of the PDFs are intended for a larger page size, or even specifically for viewing on a computer screen.

So due to the flexibility of PDF and other document formats, a document intended for viewing on one device may not be best viewed on a different device.

If all of your books look and read fine on your reader, then you probably don't have to worry about it much, but if you have some PDF files that show up tiny on your Reader screen, or they fill up the screen fine but the font is too light/small, then there are ways you can modify the PDF files on your computer to make the text bold, get rid of the page margins and so on. This way you may be able to view those books on your reader without having to increase the font size or without having to zoom in, both which can be a hassle at times.

It is best if you can leave the font size at the default Small setting, because if you increase the font size setting on the Sony Reader, it will actually hide any images that may be on the book page and instead it will reflow the text to fill the screen. So if you need the images to be visible on the page, but also need the font to be more readable, changing the font size on the reader itself isn't an option and the PDF needs to be modified.

The general idea is basically just to make the book read and display fine on your reader without any or minimal changes. I don't have any links handy, but here on the forums there are links to programs and methods you can use to remove the margins and embolden the text of your PDF documents if you have any.

Also, if you have any photos you've taken with your camera that you want to display perfectly on the Reader, those can be optimized too by scaling down/cropping the image to the exact screen size of the Reader. This way the reader won't have to resize the image on the fly which should keep it sharp and on top of that it will be a smaller file size, so they will load faster as well as take up less space on the Reader, allowing you to store more.

[Server]

After playing with a few documents, I was able to artificially increase 'contrast'
by re-formating an entire eBook. The font set within the PDF was variable so
a bold typeface was a selected and the file re-saved. When opened in the
reader the letters and text were darkened as if to increase contrast.

Bottom line, SONY can easily implement (via firmware upgrade) a toggle setting
to achieve a higher contrast for documents that default with a font that is not
optimised for better viewing while reading without zooming in or increasing
the default text size of the original document.

The fact that the reader or Epson display has the ability to self darken text on
the fly confirms that darker text contrast is more than plausible, and actually
possible!

I can't wait for the next ROM image!

[Andybaby]

cant you share this PDF I would like to see how much of a difference this is