Colour eInk in 2020?

[Quoth]

"The characteristics of this enable softer colors being displayed,"
i.e. they are pale and washed out or the screen would be too dim without a massive amount of front lighting.
"the latest color printing technology to display 4096 colors"
I doubt it's new printing technology and it may only be "logical" colours.
Edit the arithmetic below is wrong, missing combinations:

15 levels of R, G, B, RG, RB, GB and RGB (white) and off = 106 distinct brightnesses and hues unless they have eink that can do more than white, black and 14 greys.

It will be at least 1/4 brightness without a front light unless the color filter is very pastel.

Basic physics.

Good for direct sunlight.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I don't agree on the math -- the correct number of potential colours is given by 16x16x16 which does give the 4096 total number of colours. The colour range would be from 0x0000 to 0x0FFF.

Please note I am not disagreeing on the quality of the colour or the brightness, simply the number of colours that can be displayed.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I don't agree on the math -- the correct number of potential colours is given by 16x16x16 which does give the 4096 total number of colours. The colour range would be from 0x0000 to 0x0FFF.

Yes, I realised after I posted that the math was wrong, but I don't think 16 x16 x 16 is quite right as one shade is black, one is "white" and the darkest colours and palest colours may be indistinguishable from darkest grey and brightest grey. There are 15 saturations of R, G, B, Yellow, Cyan, Magenta. Some will shift in apparent colour to olives or oranges etc.

I agree that programmatically there are 4096 distinct "Colours", including the greys and variations of brigtenesses and saturations. Most people can separate maybe over a million hues and a bigger range of brightness than any display. We are not having so much discernment on saturations, likely existing displays are better than our eye and the CRT, plasma and OLED 100% saturations mostly don't exist in nature / real life. LCDs use filters so can't manage as perfect saturations.

[AnimalOfArt]

Pocketbook is about to release an color eReader in the second half of this year for about 200€.

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...n-4703231.html

Just found this article in german

It will have 4096 colors with 300ppi.
The technique they are using is called eInk-Kaleido.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by AnimalOfArt

Pocketbook is about to release an color eReader in the second half of this year for about 200€.

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...n-4703231.html

Just found this article in german

It will have 4096 colors with 300ppi.
The technique they are using is called eInk-Kaleido.

this announcement means it is a near certainty that Amazon also has a color ereader in the works
https://the-digital-reader.com/2020/...een-with-envy/

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

this announcement means it is a near certainty that Amazon also has a color ereader in the works
https://the-digital-reader.com/2020/...een-with-envy/

That’s a pretty weird image (‘how do I get this eReader through that tiny hole?”). And where is the actual Pocketbook announcement?

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by AnimalOfArt

Pocketbook is about to release an color eReader in the second half of this year for about 200€..

"200€" - yep, I'm definitely not the target demo for this device. I paid the equivalent of around 120€ for my current e-reader, and that was near my limit. The Libra here is in that 120€ sort of range, so not out of the question, but 200€ for some washed out pastels that will not enhance my reading experience? Peut-être pas. Or rather, "Peut-être, pah!"

[psbernitz]

Does a colour screen actually increase the contrast?
Because right now every ereaders background is gray, the font is black but can colour screens make the background purely white?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by psbernitz

Does a colour screen actually increase the contrast?
Because right now every ereaders background is gray, the font is black but can colour screens make the background purely white?

Unlikely, and definitely not for an E-Ink based colour screen.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by psbernitz

Does a colour screen actually increase the contrast?
Because right now every ereaders background is gray, the font is black but can colour screens make the background purely white?

Edit: Short answer is that, full colour makes the greyish white even greyer on eInk!

The background is a milky liquid the tiny black balls are in. If the balls in a cell stick to the front then it's black.

Colour is usually by a filter printed on the front of the screen/cells. So it makes the white 2/3 rds dimmer (greyer) if the filter was 1/3 rd of spectrum for each pixel. In practice that would not be possible and the R G B mix technique to give white and decent colour saturation and range of hues requires that each R, G, B subpixel blocks about 7/8ths of spectrum at least. Then since the light is reflected off the milky white liquid, the coloured light is attenuated twice by the filter. Not a problem for LCD, just increase the backlight.
So decent white, not too grey needs poorer filters (more transparent) which results in poor range of colours and pastel shades. Otherwise you need twice the front light power of an LCD backlight. Though direct sunlight will work well with no frontlight.

It's basic physics and the trick of how fake RGB colour takes advantage of how our eyes work if you have average colour vision.

Printing, film negatives and colour slides use C Y M (cyan, yellow and Magenta. Also black on printing) in layers rather than side by side R G B dots. So White (or black on negatives) has no dye/colour and lets all the light through.
No electronic C Y M layer technology yet exists. LCD twists polarisation of light and uses polarising film, so it varies from transparent to black, though a single colour is possible, the physics doesn't allow layers that vary from transparent to complementary colour, so all LCDs are monochrome with RGB filters on top.
Plasma, VFD, CRT, real LED and OLED/AMOLED use R, G, B emission, though OLED/AMOLED are not real LEDs so often also have filters too.

DLP come in two kinds. They are essentially tiny mirrors for each dot. They either use a colour wheel to add colour to a monochrome display illuminated by a white light, or use three chips with images combined by prisms. The three chip solution can use filtered white light or R, G and B LED or laser sources.
There are also real laser projectors. They have the interesting property that the image is in "focus" at any distance without focusing it. They use two stages of spinning mirrors a bit like a laser printer except much faster and the image drum is replaced by frame scan polygon mirror drum or some other deflection method.

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by psbernitz

Does a colour screen actually increase the contrast?
Because right now every ereaders background is gray, the font is black but can colour screens make the background purely white?

Books aren't printed on pure white paper though. I don't think reading on pure white paper would be a pleasant experience. If you compare printer paper, which is generally more white than a printed book, you'd see what I mean.

I've used Kindles since 2009, and have poor vision. The front lit models have been wonderful for me. What helps me is to increase the line spacing, resulting in more white space, which seems to increase contrast. Even with the older models that lacked front lighting, wide line spacing was more helpful for me than using a larger font.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by tomsem

That’s a pretty weird image (‘how do I get this eReader through that tiny hole?”). And where is the actual Pocketbook announcement?

I know, right?

I have the actual announcement as a press release (it arrived late in the evening)

[Matilo]

iReader C6 COLOR eInk eBook Reader

https://www.youtube.com/embed/2U_vgNnSfAg

[eReader fan]

We have two Hisense colour eInk phone, one Onyx Boox colour eInk phone, and the iReader colour eInk posted by Matilo above.

You all called me crazy, but who is the crazy one now???!!! Eh?? Who is it??!!!!!

By the way: Does anyone know why more colours can't be achieved?

[Quoth]

The eink does (optimistically), black, 14 levels of grey and white. This limits the number of colours (including 14 levels of grey, white, 15 brightnesses of R G B C Y M and a lesser number of tertiary shades and saturations of all shades as well as black).
The 4096 is a mathematical maximum number of possible values set by splitting the underlying "16" levels with R, G and B.

I'm not calling you crazy, but I'm sceptical that in real life the displays will be as good as the videos (not native resolution, ideal conditions, post production and viewed via RGB camera and RGB active displays that are a compromise match to the R G and B peaks of human sensitivity and don't accurately reproduce even OLED or LCD displays different from your own, or camera response). Add also the errors in the colour rendition of the illumination for the video (more important than OLED/LCD).