Plastic Logic raises $100 million to enable the first “take anywhere, read anywhere”

[yvanleterrible]

Doctoring a picture is a no-no if you're trying to get a 100mil investment. The thing has to be in good working order. An artifact, meaning made by hand, is ok. There was a movie made last year where you see a lab technician banging on a flexible display with the sole of his shoe. I have a link here that I can't verify because I'm stuck on a phone line. On the same page there is an other movie of a Plastic Logic product.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nuKBdXMpM0 Someone tell me if it's the right one?

[emkay]

There are some fast looking page changes in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwld9lGKSz4

I haven't seen my iLiad change that quickly

[yvanleterrible]

I guess that pertains to computing power. If you look at the accompanying hardware...it's big!

[emkay]

Really? I thought the speed limitation was in the e-ink technology. The iLiad, for example caches the next page of pdf files, so when it comes to changing pages, processing power should have little to do with it.
Also, the plastic logic screen is much bigger than the iLiad screen, so the faster speed is doubly surprising.

I use my iLiad a lot and rate it highly, but i do find myself starting to wonder when we will have higher contrast devices, with colour, and instantaneous screen refreshes...
I know, dream on.

[yvanleterrible]

I would be curious to see an eink screen on a laptop with a good graphics card!

[Nightwing]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I'm thinking they may have avoided cleaning it up so that it wouldn't look photoshopped.

As for rolling, I think that one would only roll side to side, since it looks like the 'tronix on the left edge would keep it from rolling top to bottom. But you might be onto something with the idea that the rolling might be contributing to the, um display artifacts ....

If its active that may means that except for a small data bus you would possible not need to bring off of the display every X-Y drive line to drive electronics. Its all in the display. Just feed the data.

Same thing that made clam shell thin display Laptop possible and usable. That cable feeding those display are about the same size as a #2 pencil.

If they can put the drive matrix logic along with control on a very think flexible plastic ( cheep substrate what the real product they do ) display. The price will really drop!

[yvanleterrible]

Active would mean internet possibilities?

[Nightwing]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Active would mean internet possibilities?

I think in this case. At least the drive electronics are active on the display instead of off the display.

[blooflame]

On e-ink's site they differentiate between active matrix displays as those where each pixel can be changed (with a Thin-Film Transistor behine each one, hence the TFT reference you often see), and segmented displays, where the segments to turn on-and-off are predefined (like the LEDs forming the numerals on your radio alarm clock). You have to have an "active matrix"-type display if you want to be able to turn any pixel on or off. The difference between e-ink and LCD is that LCD pixels have to be refreshed, with a raster scan constantly going through the graphics memory and sending the correct signals to the display; e-ink requires no refreshing since the e-ink capsules are bistable and stay the way you set them. That's the main reason e-ink saves so much power.

[RWood]

Still and all, 100MM is serious money. Somebody out there believes in the future of ereaders. It can only get better.

[nekokami]

From Wikipedia:

Whereas a passive matrix display uses a simple conductive grid to deliver current to the liquid crystals in the target area, an active matrix display uses a grid of transistors and capacitors (which are called the thin film transistors) with the ability to hold a charge for a limited period of time. Because of the switching action of transistors, only the desired pixel receives a charge, and the pixel acts as a capacitor to hold the charge until the next refresh cycle, improving image quality over a passive matrix.

I think the conventional meaning of "active display" is that the pixels can be individually turned on or off (and will, to a certain extent, hold their state without further instruction from the video interface), as opposed to having to refresh the whole screen at once. E Ink can have both methods of screen update; the whole-screen refresh appears to produce less ghosting, at least on the iLiad.

Internet access itself should not be dependent on an active display. Most internet applications, e.g. a web browser, can be displayed by refreshing either a portion of the screen or the entire screen, as the content is relatively static. However, E Ink, because of the high latency in pixel refresh, will not be appropriate for animated or other rapidly changing visual content (at least not this generation of E Ink).

[yvanleterrible]

I believe so too! But they said such things of Lcd when it came out too. One day I guess!