First sample units arrived - review by Friday or Monday!

[IceHand]

Here's a nice big (600x800) image of 16 shades of gray.
That should give a better impression than the tiny image you tried. But I'm pretty sure the Cybook only supports 4 colours (that's what their website says) and I've read on E Ink's website that Vizplex supports 8 shades of gray -- but as HarryT mentioned in a different thread the screen controller used in the Cybook does not.
But does it really matter that much as long as the dithering is good enough? I don't think so ...

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by IceHand

Here's a nice big (600x800) image of 16 shades of gray.
That should give a better impression than the tiny image you tried. But I'm pretty sure the Cybook only supports 4 colours (that's what their website says) and I've read on E Ink's website that Vizplex supports 8 shades of gray -- but as HarryT mentioned in a different thread the screen controller used in the Cybook does not.
But does it really matter that much as long as the dithering is good enough? I don't think so ...

Not bad at all. Another feature of the eb1150 that got matched. :-)

[IceHand]

Oh, and I am curious to know how this image looks like on the Cybook. My image editor (GIMP) did a pretty bad job on dithering the image to 4 shades of gray (floyd-steinberg algorithm), so I want to know if the Cybook dithering is better.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by IceHand

Oh, and I am curious to know how this image looks like on the Cybook. My image editor (GIMP) did a pretty bad job on dithering the image to 4 shades of gray (floyd-steinberg algorithm), so I want to know if the Cybook dithering is better.

Icehand,

It's dithered, but still looks decent. You can tell that there are '16' shades. And given the quality of my color images I've dropped in from "Roswell, Texas", I'm not complaining.

Derek

[picker]

Thanks so much for identifying 16 bands of "gray".

> and ran it through BD and then uploaded it to my Cybook.
I thought the Cybook could read html directly? why convert? or is "BD" some kinda sync software? sorry, I'm new to ebooks.

but I would still love to know the max image size and if it supports image panning. here are the images that were linked on the last page:

http://rob.com/airports/test/2048x2048.png
http://rob.com/airports/test/1024x1024.png
http://rob.com/airports/test/600x1024.png
http://rob.com/airports/test/512x512.png

The last one being smaller than the known screen size and should give us an idea if the other images were "changed" by the Cybook in upload.

shades_of_gray.png had 256 gray levels, while these images only have 16. Thanks alot for taking the time to test this.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by picker

Thanks so much for identifying 16 bands of "gray".

> and ran it through BD and then uploaded it to my Cybook.
I thought the Cybook could read html directly? why convert? or is "BD" some kinda sync software? sorry, I'm new to ebooks.

but I would still love to know the max image size and if it supports image panning. here are the images that were linked on the last page:

http://rob.com/airports/test/2048x2048.png
http://rob.com/airports/test/1024x1024.png
http://rob.com/airports/test/600x1024.png
http://rob.com/airports/test/512x512.png

The last one being smaller than the known screen size and should give us an idea if the other images were "changed" by the Cybook in upload.

shades_of_gray.png had 256 gray levels, while these images only have 16. Thanks alot for taking the time to test this.

Honestly, I don't know *why* I ran it through BD.

As for your four PNG files, it choked on the 2048x2048 but accepted all the rest. It could zoom to full-size - but there was no panning - or zoom out to show the entire image on the screen. This was the case on the 600x1024, 1024x1024 and 512x512.

HTH

Derek

[hello]

fo r th e record, delphidb96, will you be reviewing it before its available en masse or not? if so, when?

[picker]

> choked on the 2048x2048
It might be because the file size was greater than a Meg. I'll reduce it to 4 ugly colors to make the file smaller.

> but there was no panning
so "next page" does nothing viewing the 600x1024 image? hmm..

> I don't know *why* I ran it through BD.
perhaps loading the html directly with get the font size changes and shading in the table to work.

> So I may be seeing true 16-level grayscale or 4-level that's been 'smart-dithered'.
I'll expand the center grays, this will show the bars better.

also it would be nice to know if it does html dirs. so I updated http://rob.com/airports/test/ with the above changes. But you can grab http://rob.com/airports/test/all.zip
with one click. Expand it and drag it to the ebook.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by hello

fo r th e record, delphidb96, will you be reviewing it before its available en masse or not? if so, when?

I'm going to *attempt* to do so. When depends so much upon when I get the version 1.0 release of the firmware. I believe that this will happen soon.

Derek

[hello]

what abou t the hardwar e changes? maybe you will write about something that will change later on...

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by picker

> choked on the 2048x2048
It might be because the file size was greater than a Meg. I'll reduce it to 4 ugly colors to make the file smaller.

> but there was no panning
so "next page" does nothing viewing the 600x1024 image? hmm..

> I don't know *why* I ran it through BD.
perhaps loading the html directly with get the font size changes and shading in the table to work.

> So I may be seeing true 16-level grayscale or 4-level that's been 'smart-dithered'.
I'll expand the center grays, this will show the bars better.

also it would be nice to know if it does html dirs. so I updated http://rob.com/airports/test/ with the above changes. But you can grab http://rob.com/airports/test/all.zip
with one click. Expand it and drag it to the ebook.

Thanx. I'll test out your changed files.

No to your question, the Previous/Next commands just move to the prior or next image in the directory.

And I took the image out and turned it into an 800x600 image and it definitely showed 16 levels - through dithering.

Okay, I just tried it with a set of HTML files and one of my Mobi ebooks. The Cybook allowed me to move my HTML files into a sub-folder within the HTML folder and I was able to see them in the main menu - and access them.

However, doing the same thing with the Mobi ebook dropped the book from the main menu. It's a definite no-go for putting Mobi ebooks in sub-folders of the main Mobi folder. But remember that this may well change with version 0.96 and newer firmware.

Derek

[picker]

I think I'm missing something basic. When you make a new folder in your "html" folder that contains the index.html and view it... it loads dither.png 16.png also found in that new directory and displays on the page much like we see it on the PC web browser (without the strike through and font size changes). Are you also able to see the links at the bottom and click on them too? (like the 4bit 2048x2048 image and link to the one/ directory)

[guguy]

However, doing the same thing with the Mobi ebook dropped the book from the main menu. It's a definite no-go for putting Mobi ebooks in sub-folders of the main Mobi folder. But remember that this may well change with version 0.96 and newer firmware.

Why the hell didn't you receive 0.96 firmware ? It seems to be available for a about a
week since it has been used in the gen3 demo clip.

Sometimes I just DON'T understand why bookeen is acting so strangely.

[IceHand]

Maybe they don't have a firmware flasher ready yet?

[guguy]

Yes, sure, when they want to test their new firmware they order a new GEN3
to PVI...