New Color E-Reader Tech To Challenge E-Ink Dominance 199
Technology Review reports from the Consumer Elecronics Show in Las Vegas that potential e-reader competitors to E-Ink are everywhere. The current market leader in e-book displays is greyscale-only, and it takes a long time to change the display ("turn the page"), so video applications are not possible. E-Ink says they will have a color display shipping by late next year, but it will be dimmer than the current greyscale and its response time will still be too slow for video. The wannabe competitors — Pixel Qi, Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Liquavista, and Kent Displays — all do color and some of them can do video (Pixel Qi, Qualcomm, Liquavista), and some of them (Pixel Qi, Kent) are shipping now.
Re:Real book page turn times (Score:1, Funny)
Reminds me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ
Re:Real book page turn times (Score:3, Funny)
This is why every ebook reader also has an mp3 player in it.
No, every eBook reader has an mp3 player in it because every manufacturer wants audio feedback that doesn't sound like an alarm clock being murdered. If you're going to [therefore] skip the bit-banging speaker interface and even FM synthesis and move along to some real audio, it barely costs more to install a codec capable of handling the audio output part; and decoding mp3 is such a trivial task compared to [say] displaying a PDF in a timely fashion that it doesn't even bear mentioning in terms of CPU time... especially since mp3 can be decoded with integer-only math. Also, if you're implementing text-to-speech, mp3 is a joke. Not putting it in would only confuse.
Re:Do not want. (Score:2, Funny)
Can you explain to me (and I suspect all the rest of us) what a "color book" is?
When you reach kindergarten, some of the books they give you are not printed in color. Instead, the illustrations are just done in solid lines, with nothing filled in. The idea is that you can use your crayons to fill in the color areas yourself. At first this seems counter-intuitive and time-consuming, but it's actually enjoyable once you get the hang of it.
Re:Power? (Score:3, Funny)
The Kindle does display an image, usually of a famous author, when it's turned off
Hopefully they'd avoid using an image of George Orwell.
Re:Real book page turn times (Score:2, Funny)
RRRrripp.
that's the sound of your argument overextending.
Re:Power? (Score:3, Funny)
I honestly don't know why this isn't the default setting. I actually downloaded the Nook user manual just to see if it was possible to use the cover art (which they already have downloaded, for the CoverFlow-like browsing) as the screen saver, but, no.
I mean, how can I use my Nook to pick up chicks if I can't subtly cue them in to the fact that I'm reading Twilight?