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Old 06-04-2009, 04:04 PM   #31
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In previous colour LCD screens, the colours have been provided by a fine colour filter - giving RGB dots or lines. The Pixel-Qi screen doesn't work like that. There are no colour filters at all. All the colour is provided by passing the backlight through a clever diffractiongrating/lens system to give diagonal stripes of colour. If there's no backlight, there's no colour.

It really is clever. But it does mean that without the backlight you only have B&W.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ProDigit View Post
I'd love going back to B&W!
Though I wonder what's so bad about blurred out pictures in color. We all are happy to have a reflective power effective screen! Even if the colors aren't showing as well, I think it's still better to have them available without backlight, then not having them at all.
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Old 06-04-2009, 04:36 PM   #32
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Of course, there are tons of people out there who don't necessarily read enough to care about the incremental improvement the eInk screen provides when faced with the great multi-use possibility of this kind of screen.
"Multi-use possibility" is also a lure for people who read enough. Generic Wintel hardware offers a wealth of reading software packages and almost complete coverage for various DRM schemes and formats.
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Old 06-04-2009, 10:51 PM   #33
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According to me you get the same result as taking a laptop with reflective screen outside in the sun. You'll be able to make out some colors, but not all.

I guess it does not matter whatever light comes in the screen, but whatever radiates out that can alter the color. So by the time sunlight passes the LCD layer and bounces back on the white/reflective background, and passes through the LCD again, it has lost lots of it's intensity. This probably could be a reason why colors aren't very visible on a device like this.

To me it seems just like a TFT screen with a white plastic background to allow ledlight to pass through it.

If so, the cons would be that those screens can never really be bright.
The pro's would be they don't really need light.

Another thing might be, the more sunlight or outward light, the more the colors are washed out, even with backlight on.
So this device will be good enough to see black and white movies with minimal colors that are barely viewable (kind of like you set the saturation of your TV to 15% or so).

The problem could be not really solved, but improved by creating filter thin LCD screens, reducing the thickness of the screen, perhaps making them in hard plastic instead of glass. The closer the distance from the sunrays bouncing from the white background to the actual LCD crystals, the clearer and better the picture will be.

As far as battery comsumption, the screen itself uses about the same battery consumption as a whole Kindle DX. It's not that much different from our current LCD technology (just optimized to make the LCD transparent instead of grey greenish.
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Old 06-05-2009, 06:02 AM   #34
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Yes yes yes! :-) Finally a proper video on this.

And it is looking great. No Kindle DX for me then.

Anyone thinking of investing in and developing a new and much improved PDF reader, with much better note taking, underlining and note searching capabilities than what Adobe and the hangarounds currently can handle (think: Evernote for PDF in file note taking)? Now is the time! In one year millions of Pixel Qi netbook owners will be screaming for such functionality.
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Old 06-05-2009, 10:25 AM   #35
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I now want a 24" 1920x1200 one on my desk.
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Old 06-05-2009, 10:47 AM   #36
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I now want a 24" 1920x1200 one on my desk.
I got one of those. You can't beat it with a stick.

BOb
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Old 06-06-2009, 07:50 PM   #37
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Originally Posted by seuzx View Post
Yes yes yes! :-) Finally a proper video on this.

And it is looking great. No Kindle DX for me then.

Anyone thinking of investing in and developing a new and much improved PDF reader, with much better note taking, underlining and note searching capabilities than what Adobe and the hangarounds currently can handle (think: Evernote for PDF in file note taking)? Now is the time! In one year millions of Pixel Qi netbook owners will be screaming for such functionality.
Nuance has a pretty good PDF viewer with some note taking abilities. Its much better than Adobes I think. There is also OneNote to take actual notes. I'm definitely holding off on any other eink devices, I have my Iliad and I want something that is better at PDFs a netbook with this screen in it is exactly what I want. I think when this thing releases I'll be sleeping outside a Best Buy to get one for 2 days straight like they have the iPhone
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Old 06-06-2009, 10:51 PM   #38
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Quote:
Originally Posted by junkyardwillie View Post
Nuance has a pretty good PDF viewer with some note taking abilities. Its much better than Adobes I think. There is also OneNote to take actual notes. I'm definitely holding off on any other eink devices, I have my Iliad and I want something that is better at PDFs a netbook with this screen in it is exactly what I want. I think when this thing releases I'll be sleeping outside a Best Buy to get one for 2 days straight like they have the iPhone
Don't forget that the Pixel Qi 3Qi is NOT eink. It has an epaper mode (and two other modes) but the display is a variation on current LCD tech with some pretty sweet new twists tossed in to radically reduce the power needs, or at least let the use decide if a lower power mode is fine for the task they are currently working on.

It is an important distinction to make. Because eink displays have MUCH lower power needs. Though I wonder just what the difference in battery life would be if one were to install an eink display on, say a PDA or netbook. I have a hunch it would not be really much different from the 3Qi in epaper mode. A lot of the battery life in the eink based readers comes from less power hungry hardware inside. I guess my point is, eink reading devices might really not be as efficient as has been assumed just because of the display.

I mention that because all of the new CPU's and other components in systems can now be completely powered down when not being used. What Pixel Qi did was expand that ability to the display itself. Now it seems we will have full on very efficient mobile computer devices. I am with you...can't wait to see the final units produced this fall or so...

I am sure someday soon someone, somewhere will do an oranges to sort-of-oranges Pepsi Challenge.
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Old 06-07-2009, 12:55 PM   #39
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Hmm. e-ink is dead. Glad I waited.

Well maybe not, but this looks like it will mature much faster.

If you watch the other video where Mary-Lou answers questions, they actually show this thread. It was kind of wierd
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Old 06-07-2009, 09:59 PM   #40
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E-ink just costs a lot, and performs low, but it is the best energy saving technology and is best viewable outside (even better than Pixel Qi's technique).

I think it's far from dead; only Pixel Qi has a different type of screen for a different audience. It uses more battery than E-ink, and is less suited for reading books.

I'm getting impressed if Pixel Qi is able to manage to get processor in a halt state, though I think that would be pretty impossible with a computer, since moving images like eg: the movement of the mouse on the screen, require the processor to be active.
Most processors downclock to 800Mhz after which they become very inefficient. Meaning that the processor speed may lower in clock frequency, but it would barely save some milliWatts.

this halt state which they try to reach on a laptop would only benefit when reading books, and nothing moving is on the screen.

Also, the screen currently is like TFT/LCD, they yet need to get the improved resolution of the OLPC screens working. E-ink already works with this type of resolution. So you'll end up with the grain of mininetbooks.

There are still disadvantages about Pixel Qi's technology compared to E-ink; though there are many advantages like moving images, more B/W grey tints, colors on backlit, and B/W with utter minimal colors on non-backlit.
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Old 06-07-2009, 10:29 PM   #41
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Check out the latest videos of the Pixel Qi screen under different lighting conditions and compared to the kindle. Pretty impressive! Mobileread gets a mention as well.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/07/p...o-sheds-light/
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Old 06-08-2009, 08:35 AM   #42
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ProDigit View Post
Also, the screen currently is like TFT/LCD, they yet need to get the improved resolution of the OLPC screens working. E-ink already works with this type of resolution. So you'll end up with the grain of mininetbooks.
The screen resolution already matches the highest ressolution eInk screens. (200dpi)
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Old 06-08-2009, 10:44 AM   #43
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The screen resolution already matches the highest ressolution eInk screens. (200dpi)
Yes, I saw it in the movie yesterday (after the post); thanks for correcting!
The color mode is like laptops but for some reason the B&W (non backlit) resolution is rated higher.
I wonder how they get to these measurements that B&W has a higher resolution than color?
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Old 06-08-2009, 11:10 AM   #44
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I wonder how they get to these measurements that B&W has a higher resolution than color?
You can find a good explanation here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display.
It refers to the OLPC screen but the basic working principles are the same of the new 3Qi display.
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Old 06-08-2009, 11:45 AM   #45
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It's to do with the way the pixels are coloured.

On a normal colour LCD screen, each pixel is actually made up of three sub-pixels, one each of red, green and blue. So although the stated resolution might be 1024x600, because of the sub-pixels, it's "really" 3072x600.

So on an ordinary colour LCD screen, five pixels look like this if we look closely enough:

lll lll lll lll lll

note that the pixels are square, each made up of three tall sub-pixels of Red, Green and Blue.

The Pixel Qi screen does it completely differently. It doesn't have sub-pixels at all. Only square pixels at around 200dpi. This, obviously, works fine for black and white. It the adding in of colour that's clever. The same five pixel shown above look like this on a Pixel Qi screen:



(well, except they're square, not round)

Yes - each pixel can only be a shade of one colour, not any colour. The colours are off-set on each row, so the colours appear as diagonal lines across the screen like this - depicting four rows of eight pixels:






Note that each block of four pixels does contain at least one pixel each of red, green and blue. So the colour resolution of the screen is at worst half that of the black and white screen.

In practice, because our eyes are much better at shade compared to colour, it's almost as good as 200dpi colour.

It's very clever - a much better trick than the old ZX Spectrum colour screen :-)



Quote:
Originally Posted by ProDigit View Post
Yes, I saw it in the movie yesterday (after the post); thanks for correcting!
The color mode is like laptops but for some reason the B&W (non backlit) resolution is rated higher.
I wonder how they get to these measurements that B&W has a higher resolution than color?
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