News from CES on e-ink!

[blue_skies]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

Linux on Desktop is MUCH more likely than Color eInk, because it's been viable for more than 10 years and for 20 for niche users. Win 10 is driving adoption

So not comparable. Colour eink simply can't compete with brightness & contrast of mono eink or quality of colour LCD even 20 years ago. Non-eink such as Mirasol showed some promise...

Windows 10 and the end of Windows 7 drove me to Linux... I love it, and I'm very happy to be liberated from Microsoft! (I just installed the most recent Calibre on Linux Mint today - it's very nice!)

Anyway... I was very disappointed when Mirasol failed to gain momentum. In recent years I have been rooting for ClearInk, which has show a lot of promise lately, and I would be happy if that or Color eInk screens were offered on phones and tablets in the US market someday.

I would be ecstatic if a linux-based phone by Purism - like the Librem 5 - or the Linux PinePhone is someday sold with color eInk or ClearInk! (I hate using my current phone in sunlight.)

[leebase]

Chrome is not “Linux on the desktop” it is “you can do everything in a browser”. Android isn’t “Linux in your phone”. There is much more to an operating system than the kernel.

The closest thing to dethroning Windows is so much software being developed as web apps. And Mobile phones have become the largest platform for accessing phones...and Android rules mobile phones.

But mobile phones aren’t “the desktop”....and Windows rules as it has forever since about Windows 95.

[ps67]

Between Eink colour and Linux on Desktop there is a great difference: the second works perfectly since many Years (it is my preferred OS, I need Windows 10 only because of proprietary software like Kindle Previewer, Kobo Desktop, ADE that can also be installed with Wine), the first, until now, is a tecnology that doesn't offer the same performance of the other devices (on tablet, on phones ecc.).

[ottdmk]

On the Linux front, there is the small fact that China wants to stop using Windows. It could move the needle a bit.

On the e-ink front: I'm not sure of the impact of colour e-ink on the consumer market. On the commercial display market, it might be significant.

[binaryhermit]

I didn't really mean to drag Linux into it, I was just saying that I don't think color eInk will really ever be much of a thing, at least not in the next 10 or more years

[OGRIchardNixon]

Originally Posted by ottdmk

On the Linux front, there is the small fact that China wants to stop using Windows. It could move the needle a bit.

On the e-ink front: I'm not sure of the impact of colour e-ink on the consumer market. On the commercial display market, it might be significant.

It could encourage development of professional content creation software for Linux. China and Russia are both pushing away from Microsoft.

Sent from my SM-N960W using Tapatalk

[Quoth]

Indeed some as yet unknown tech is needed unless Qualcomm sell off all the IP etc in Mirasol to Samsung, Sony or someone Chinese.
Actual eink coloured by filters in front of the pixels can never be bright enough without front lights, because "white" would be additive sub-pixels of red, green and blue. CYMK on paper is bright because it's subtractive. The white is no ink. Yellow is only the blue removed, Magenta is only green removed and Cyan is only red removed. The RGB filters on a display remove ALL light except red, green or blue on every dot.

This is why it's not about technology or better manufacturing for ambient light reflective displays. At the least you need clear pixels that reflect all the light for white. Even Mirasol would be poor for monochrome compared to eink and really poor compared to CYMK paper printing and it's the best alternative to LED or OLED.
The reason that reflective LCD is very rare and only used on monochrome is that LCD needs two polarising filters. If perfect you'd lose half the light. In practice they are slightly lossy and reflected light has to pass twice. The 1/4 or worse transmission of the R G B or RG and GB (alternate lines) sub pixel per colour pixel loses the light twice on reflection. Most of the power consumption is the backlight. Even for "white" less than 1/5th is visible. OLED isn't actually usually real LEDs, but blueish Electroluminescent spots with phosphor. Real R G B LED displays do exist and are more efficient, better colour and longer life than OLED.

So an ambient light colour ereader needs CYMK technology where a white dot is a clear cell rather than R G and B visually averaged. That concept of technology only exists for photographic film and ink on paper.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

Indeed some as yet unknown tech is needed unless Qualcomm sell off all the IP etc in Mirasol to Samsung, Sony or someone Chinese.

I've seen Mirasol. It was terrible and unwatchable for more than a few seconds.

Why do you think it has potential?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I've seen Mirasol. It was terrible and unwatchable for more than a few seconds.
Why do you think it has potential?

Maybe it's rubbish.
However the underlying idea / technology has more potential to do a low power colour screen with ambient light than a coloured filter matrix on top of eink pixels (black balls in a milky white liquid).

I'd thought the reason for Mirasol's failure (one ereader screen in products by two Asian booksellers) was the double dip high royalty cost of dealing with Qualcomm (royalty on part plus they demand a percent of the product price ex-factory). Perhaps it just wasn't very good.
I do think the idea of video on it sounded more like typical Qualcomm hype than anything viable. It should have been OK for text with colour?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

Maybe it's rubbish.
However the underlying idea / technology has more potential to do a low power colour screen with ambient light than a coloured filter matrix on top of eink pixels (black balls in a milky white liquid).

I'd thought the reason for Mirasol's failure (one ereader screen in products by two Asian booksellers) was the double dip high royalty cost of dealing with Qualcomm (royalty on part plus they demand a percent of the product price ex-factory). Perhaps it just wasn't very good.
I do think the idea of video on it sounded more like typical Qualcomm hype than anything viable. It should have been OK for text with colour?

I saw a Qualcomm presentation for a scheme to increase the number of mirasol gray levels. Afterwards, they let people hold and view the Korean mirasol ereader, which was very washed out and whose only virtues perceivable by me were video capability and it did not get even more washed out in direct sunlight. I also experienced some discomfort from what might be some mirasol equivalent to flicker, but I have never seen that mentioned by anyone else. Under questioning, the mirasol technical team did not give any indication that mirasol color saturation would ever be improved. This was a little after the release of the Korean mirasol product and I've seen nothing to indicate any progress has been made since. To me, under any conditions other than sunlight or bright daylight, I would much rather read backlit LCD than mirasol, and I do not like reading more than a few pages on backlit LCD.

I thought Clearink was among the last reflective color displays standing. I haven't seen Clearink yet, so I have no opinion on how good it is now or what its prospects are. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I didn't really mean to drag Linux into it, I was just saying that I don't think color eInk will really ever be much of a thing, at least not in the next 10 or more years

Linux on the Desktop was a good comparison. Linux is useful. Linux is dominate in several OTHER areas. And if you want to speak of kernels instead of operating systems, Linux dominates mobile as well.

However... “The Year of Linux on the Desktop” was about Linux trouncing Microsoft Windows “on the desktop”. It was predicted year after year after year after decade. It never happened. It never came close. It never even came close to being as big as the Mac....which has always been tiny compared to Windows.

Linux was superior in nearly every way to Windows and was free. How could it possibly fail to sweep the expensive and proprietary Microsoft Windows from the desktop?

Like the color eInk advocates....the Linux folk missed key factors in what it would take to succeed. They over values their preference for Linux and under estimated the real obstacles.

And thus....your comparison was quite appropriate. For “Linux in the desktop”....but not “Linux in general”

[JSWolf]

One of Linux's biggest problems is how seriously fragmented it is with all the different variations. Plus, some of the repositories can be rubbish. There are a lot of versions of Calibre that do not work.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One of Linux's biggest problems is how seriously fragmented it is with all the different variations. Plus, some of the repositories can be rubbish. There are a lot of versions of Calibre that do not work.

I would disagree with you. Most of the repository versions of calibre do work. Just that they are horribly outdated (one repository recently offered me calbre 2.55) and updates are not available.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I would disagree with you. Most of the repository versions of calibre do work. Just that they are horribly outdated (one repository recently offered me calbre 2.55) and updates are not available.

In plain English, rubbish.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One of Linux's biggest problems is how seriously fragmented it is with all the different variations.

One of the nicest things about linux is all the choices provided by the different variations.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Plus, some of the repositories can be rubbish. There are a lot of versions of Calibre that do not work.

Which Calibre versions are delivered by microsoft and apple?