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Sony Launches First Commercial Electronic Paper Display Reader
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Apr 23, 2004 02:41 AM
from the online-news-in-newsprint dept.
from the online-news-in-newsprint dept.
prostoalex writes "The e-paper is coming to reality in the form of a 6" screen with higher than usual 170 dpi and $381 price tag. It runs a customized version of Linux, and being Sony-branded, supports MemoryStick. The British journalists claim that three AAA batteries keep it up for 10,000 pages, but it's not too clear whether they've actually verified it, or just read the press-release. The manufacturers are hoping to sell 5,000 of these a month as their best-case scenario."
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Uh.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Uh.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Uh.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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One question (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:One question (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:One question (Score:5, Interesting)
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bookmarks (Score:4, Informative)
I can also jump anywhere in the book based on percent, so if I can remember where things are in the book based on the percentage (not unlike remembering approximate page numbers in a dead tree book) then I can jump to that area very quickly.
It is also nice how the book stays on the same page when you "close" it (quit the program) and them "open" it again (open the program). Say hello to the end of traditional bookmarks and/or dogeared pages. :D
I can't imagine why this bookreader would be any different...
Incidently, reading eBooks on a PDA is great for reading on a train (such as those you find in Japan). You can read one handed and use the scroll buttons to flip the "pages" (great when you are standing up and have to hold on to a handle)...
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Re:One question (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless, of course, you are searching back a bunch of pages quickly, like people do all the time while reading novels with tricky plots.
I believe that some scientists have developed "text searching" technologies that allow computing devices to "search" through the words in a file. Hopefully this device could make use of this new advance, and "search" the pages a bit faster than you could flick around the pages of a book...
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I wonder.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like every time an announcement like this is made a week later we find out they aren't making the source available..
Here is source (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Here is source (Score:5, Informative)
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Old Reliable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Old Reliable (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a PDA for reading, but for me it not as an alternative to books - it's an alternative to _no_ books. It's something I can carry around that can contain several hundred texts (including reference works, fiction and so on) when I am travelling, when I am not at home, or (as now) when I live in a different country for a time. Bringing along hundreds of physical books is just not an option.
The feature set of this device is (for me) properly compared with the PDA I currently use, rather than with a physical book. Sadly, while the screen seems very good, the use of DRM will likely cripple the device so badly it might as well not exist for me.
I have zero interest in buying content for it - I just want to be able to easily upload any textual content in a standard format (be it html, pdf or whatever) and display and search it on the device. I suspect that this is not possible with this device.
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Re:Old Reliable (Score:5, Insightful)
That's perfectly fine. But the generation has already been born that will not share your preference. It's a matter of what's available when you grow up. My teachers' teachers wrote everything by long hand, including final versions of thngs. My teachers used the typewriter for final versions but composed in longhand. I write everything in a word processor first time through but still prefer hardcopy for reading. My students will soon be comfortable composing and reading electronically.
My question is, what's next?
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Re:Old Reliable (Score:5, Interesting)
That's perfectly fine. But the generation has already been born that will not share your preference. It's a matter of what's available when you grow up. My teachers' teachers wrote everything by long hand, including final versions of thngs. My teachers used the typewriter for final versions but composed in longhand. I write everything in a word processor first time through but still prefer hardcopy for reading. My students will soon be comfortable composing and reading electronically.
Gee, I wonder where I fit in. I'm 30ish (well, I'll be thirty this year), and I prefer typing to writing on paper, but I actually prefer the Grafitti on my Clie to typing. Sure, it's not as fast, but it's much more portable than a keyboard. I can't even remember the last time I read something on a paper book. I fill up all available memory on my Clie with books, and as I finish each one I delete it. When it's empty of books, I fill it again. I've been reading more and at a steadier rate for the last 6 months than I *ever* have in my life, and I"ve got much less time to do so than I ever have in my life.
And I just know that when we can write into a computer, we can search what we've written, and when the computer shows us what we wrote, it can be read by anyone in any font they prefer. Beats the hell out of rating someone's penmanship everytime you try to read their longhand.
My question is, what's next?
Um, penis tattoos?
Parent
Re:Old Reliable (Score:4, Insightful)
In a few generation all the children have to carry to school is one sheet op electronic paper.
There backs won't be damaged by loads of books and notebooks.
And ofcourse they will laugh at there old fasioned grandpa. Electronic paper is to paper, what paper is to clay tablets.
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The next step (Score:5, Interesting)
So the question is, would this be possible? Can the screen refresh its contents fast enough for normal computer use? Can it be used interchangably as a regular monitor? If so, this thing sounds great.
Re:The next step (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The next step (Score:5, Insightful)
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Can it read free content ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can it read free content ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Can it read free content ? (Score:5, Funny)
Someone has lost the plot here. Is it them, or is it me?
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Getting there (Score:3, Insightful)
Minority report is approaching.....
refresh rate is not an issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that this is black and white (at best greyscale) technology primarly designed for reading text. It will definitely be faster to change page than for you to flip the page of the book when reading.
I can't wait to get my hands on those. E-books are finally readable
Re:refresh rate is not an issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:refresh rate is not an issue (Score:5, Informative)
That is not what progressive means. Progressive is the opposite of interlaced -- an interlaced display alternates updating the even and odd scan lines, while a progressive display updates all of the scan lines in one pass. Whether it requires constant refreshing (CRTs) or not (LCDs and Plasmas) is immaterial.
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A writer's dream, almost (Score:3, Interesting)
i'll wait just a little bit longer... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer... (Score:5, Insightful)
How many books have you read that were typed in color? All of mine are black text on white paper.
The occasional picture would look a bit better in color, but B&W looks good enough. It's ready for primetime in that department.
This is not a computer screen that you'll be playing UT2K3 on. It's solely for text display, and the contrast is better than it needs to be already.
It's 800x600 in a ~8" screen, with a much higher DPI than a computer monitor. How much higher res do you want? Besides, this is not for playing games on, it's for reading text.
If they're smart, they'll stick to being just fast enough to render PDFs and HTML docs. Nobody wants a device that goes through 3 AAA batteries in 5 minutes. BTW, this is a freaking eBook, not a PDA. It doesn't need to be able to run Office. Come on now.
Parent
Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong on several counts.
1) The colors do not need to overlap. Why would they? As you noted, monitors use side-by-side colors rather than overlapping colors, and e-paper would be no different in this regard.
2) As this is a reflective display rather than an emissive display, the primary colors would be cyan, magenta, and yellow (possibly with black), not RGB.
3) I have no idea where you get the "1/3 of the light" figure from. This technology is quite different than LCDs -- LCDs have fundamental limitations on their ability to transmit light due to the use of polarizing filters. e-paper does not use polarizing filters, just plain ol' reflection, and this means that (theoretically) there is nothing stopping e-paper from having brightness comparable to good paper. It's just a matter of refining the technology.
The real reason you haven't seen a color version yet, and aren't likely to anytime soon, is that e-paper is currently a strictly on/off display. It does not do grayscales at all. Suppose you figured out how to triple the resolution of this device and switch from B&W to CMY. You now have a display capable of showing exactly eight colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, blue, black, and white. That's it. You need intermediate steps (say, 50% cyan and 25% yellow) to display any other colors.
Either somebody needs to figure out how to make e-paper do grayscales, or the resolution needs to be way higher so that many subpixels of each color can be devoted to each pixel.
Parent
Okay, so... (Score:4, Interesting)
I love the idea but I won't buy it (Score:4, Insightful)
Not because I miss the touch of a real dead tree book. Not because it doesn't bend. Not because it's expensive.
I won't buy it simply because it's ridiculous that the content expires in two months. What's the point of being able to load up to 500 books on that device if they expire 60 days later????
Re:I love the idea but I won't buy it (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially when the product dies due to lack of market interest.
Any content you did "own" will be unusable, and if you could crack the drm to transfer to another format, you would breaking the law. So you are left with nothing.
In other words, another useless ebook.
Magna Doodle (Score:3, Interesting)
This particular implementation, however, does not sound appealling due to the advertising whores that want some screenspace and the DRM that cripples its functionality. If they can sell these things for under $400 at such low volumes, then much better device that use essentially the same display technology cannot be too far off.
Not perfect... (Score:3, Interesting)
..yet. Give it a generation or two to iron out the problems that bound to pop up, and practicly everyone will buy them. The first videorecorders, personal computers, walkmen, mp3-players and whatnot wasn't perfect either, but these days 'everyone' has one.
For me, I would like to see this for at least half the prize and with the ability to display colour photographs (but then, a lot of the books I read has colour pictures in them), as well as support for wirtually any fileformat that displays text under the sun - as well as beeing able to display photographs from my digicam. Oh, and add a CF-card slot to it too, please ;)
Seriously thought - drop the price in half and I'll prolly buy one, memorystick, monocrome text and all.
Sony corporate hardware & content conflicts (Score:5, Interesting)
Philips invented the paper, they work closely with Matsushita, so I'd wait for a Panasonic competitor to hit the market. Matsushita seem to have come up with a lot of neat stuff over the past year, hopefully it's a renaissance that will continue.
Solar Cells, Not Batteries! (Score:5, Insightful)
The joy of eBooks (Score:5, Interesting)
What I've found is that it's no substitute for sitting down with a real book, but it's great when waiting around at the post office, eating lunch, or any time I have some time I'd like to read but may not have planned for and brought a book.
The article and Sony seemed to be concerned with content, with the focus on this product that you can get a cheaper eBook than a real book. That, to me, is not a compelling reason to buy the thing. The collection at the Gutenberg Project would make it compelling for me, and I'm surprised that the eBook world has not embraced that in their marketing. Perhaps it's because consumer technology traditionally enables the sale of "content" (records, DVD's, etc.), and pointing to free content might be a no-no to publishers of current works. But if they wanted to sell the hardware, it would be a pretty gutsy move to advertise "thousands of free classic titles".
Re:Japanese QWERTY (Score:3, Informative)
Japanese keyboards are like qwerty, but each letter/number has a kana (like a syllable) associated. There's a key next to space bar that change keyboard mode (hiragana/katakana/roman).
Re:Japanese QWERTY (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Japanese QWERTY (Score:4, Informative)
I dont see why people think asian languadges are so difficult.
Try find a kanji in a dictionary...
Try read a japanese text with a dictionary...
Try speak a word you read frist time (kanji usually has 2 way of reading)...
Korean has a easier way of writing, but sometimes they use kanjis too.
PS: IANAT (I am not a troll), but i do have a lot of work studying japanese...
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Re:Japanese QWERTY (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Japanese QWERTY (Score:4, Informative)
The problem comes in two forms. The first of which is an early resistence by the intelligensia to actually use the Japanese alphabet (which was the invention of mere women). Chinese was the language of culture, and most Japanese works written before and around the time of the invention of the Japanese phonetic alphabet were not written in Japanese using the Chinese Kanji, they were actually written in classical Chinese (sometimes with a certain amount of skill, but often rather crudely). Much as the learned of Europe wrote in Latin, even though Latin was not their native tongue.
With this dissimilarity, many of these people had a language that was either descended from or a close relative of Latin. Chinese and Japanese have no common base. They are very, very dissimilar.
And just as these European scholars, when they did write in their native tongue they couldn't help themselves from sprinkling it liberally with Chinese.
And so, despite their being a native alphabet, the Chinese Kanji became imbedded in the native style of writing.
No we come to the second issue. Why don't they just, in modern times, simply drop the use of Kanji and write in Japanese? Because Japanese is a highly polyglot language, just like English. It has adopted into itself many foreign words, English, Spanish, Dutch, Portugese (the "Japanese" word for the kimono's (actually a western word in a sense, although composed of a Japanese phrase)undergarment, "Juban," is the Portugese word for "undershirt," gibao,( And the pattern of the garment itself is transformed from its traditional Japanese form into the European form)), and, of course. . . Chinese.
But, as I've already pointed, out Chinese and Japanese have no relation, in particular Chinese is not phonetic, and thus there is no way to spell these Chinese words in the Japanese phonetic alphabet. So they need to use Kanji.
Had the Japanese encountered the Spanish before the Chinese things would have turned out rather differently, as the Latin alphabet is not only a very good fit with the Japanese language, it fits Japanese a bit better than it does the Germanically derived English.
KFG
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Re:Japanese QWERTY (Score:5, Informative)
Back to the original issue though, the Japanese language also has many words where the context is required to understand the meaning. For example "Kumo" (spider/cloud), "Kami" (hair/paper), "Hana" (nose/flower), and so on, all have identical pronunciations.
Under such circumstances, using full Kana will result in a very difficult to understand sentence that is long, flat, and hard to read. Using Chinese Kanji for specific vocabulary makes it very easy to read. The Kanji provides the context, and often the pronunciation.
One misperception is that the invention of Kana by women allowed them to write strictly in Kana alone. This is neither true nor accurate. As the parent had mentioned, the full Chinese Kanji writings of the time were written in a crude interpretation of the Chinese language, and was more often than not pretty poor as Chinese. It had it's own structure that was vaguely Japanese in grammatic structure, but you couldn't read it directly into Japanese. Hard to explain, but it was sort of a written language that was a language to itself. There was no way you could read it straight, it required interpretation.
This meant that writting in Kanji required more than the knowledge of the written language, but a background in an entirely different spoken language (Chinese) too. Just imagine if English was merely a spoken language, and the written language was Russian. (French and Spanish are way too similar to English than Japanese and Chinese are.)
By creating Kana, which was phonetic, it was possible to write sentences that could be read as Japanese by filling the gaps that the Chinese-esque writing simply "assumed". (I suppose you could say that prior to Kana, the written language was similar to Arabic where you need to assume the vowels by reading the context, as there are no vowels in the written language. Or so I'm told.) Of course, this was a very "Femminin" thing to do, and naturally was NOT a "Macho" (=Manly and Intelligent) thing to do in those days.
Either way, the use of Kana was gradually accepted, and the written Japanese language evolved a little at a time. It's still evolving today (as is the case with most any active language) so even works from 100 years ago are hard to read or understand. The Japanese written language is still very different from the spoken language, but it's much more Japanese these days. There is also a trend in decreasing the ammount of Kanji and increasing Kana, although I believe this is more attributed to lower educational standards these days, with people that can't read a lot of the more complex Kanji. For better or for worse, that's the case.
As a side note, Kana itself was derived from Kanji, and was a "simplified" form. I'm not sure how the Korean language evolved, but they too use a mixture of Chinese characters and their own phonetic characters. (Although it's rarely seen... the only areas I've seen Kanji in Korea were in a few signs, and occasionally in newspaper headlines.)
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Re:i hate sony (Score:5, Interesting)
Well it won't happen here. Sony has been pushing their proprietary "memory stick" which uses heavy drm called "magicgate" in all of their products hoping that the sheer number of devices they can put it in will give it a valid/default market base.
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Re:i hate sony (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a wonder why anyone buys Sony at all these days. I know on principle that I'm not going to lock myself into their products or media when I can't use the cards interchangeably with other devices I might own.
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Re:i hate sony (Score:4, Interesting)
What about one of those USB flash pen/thumb drives that are showing up everywhere? Universal in nature and not proprietary.
Their DRM is barely used
But yet it lies in wait.
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Re:Dupe...Not. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:170 dpi? (Score:5, Informative)
What's the point of 170dpi? My Palm has perhaps 40dpi at the most and it has perfectly readable text.
As already mentioned, higher resolution is easier on the eyes.. and recall that this is a japanse product which means it has to be able to display japanse letters (kanji and katakana I believe they are called) which needs a higher resolution then the latin alphabet to remain readable.
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Re:Surely I'm being stupid.... (Score:4, Informative)
If you had RTFA you would know that it only takes power to refresh the screen not to maintain a static image. So the battery life is 10,000 pages whether you flick through one a second, or spend an hour on each page.
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