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Displays

E Ink's New Color Electronic Paper Is Fast Enough To Play Videos (gizmodo.com) 57

Posted by BeauHD from the something-to-write-home-about dept.
E Ink has unveiled a new version of its "Kaleido" color e-paper color display capable of playing animations and videos. It can also support displays up to 13.3-inches. Gizmodo reports: Kaleido was followed by Kaleido Plus which offered some key improvements, but it is now being replaced by the freshly announced Kaleido 3. We haven't had a chance to go eyes-on with Kaleido 3 just yet, but according to E Ink, "by optimizing the design of the ePaper module structure, E Ink Kaleido 3 has increased its color saturation by 30 percent compared to the previous generation." That's not a stark contrast on paper (pun intended) and Kaleido 3 still only supports 4,096 colors, but in person, the improvements between versions are usually far more obvious.

E Ink also claims that Kaleido 3, which will be available in three sizes (7.8-inch, 10.3-inch, and 13.3-inch) for everything from e-readers to larger tablets, employs a new front light technology that reduces the amount of blue light bouncing off the screen to make reading easier at night without resorting to warmer color temperature options for the LEDs which would throw off the accuracy of the colors being displayed. The most interesting upgrade with Kaleido 3 is that E Ink claims the responsiveness of the display has been improved which "enables the module to play animations and videos, providing new options for digital reading and writing in educational and professional applications."
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E Ink's New Color Electronic Paper Is Fast Enough To Play Videos More

E Ink's New Color Electronic Paper Is Fast Enough To Play Videos

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  • 36 hour battery life *swoon*

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Arethan ( 223197 )

      with so many apps being written in javascript these days, I start to wonder if the screen is really the major power draw anymore...

      • Judging just by how much more battery life I get from turning down the brightness on my pinephone, the LCD screen is still at least half the power draw. YMMV.

      • As long as the app is doing nothing, it does not matter in what language it is written.
        And JS is usualy jitted to assembly anyway.

    • Re: Laptop with e-ink display kthxplz? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TigerTime ( 626140 ) on Friday April 08, 2022 @09:55PM (#62430878)

      I think the biggest and easiest market for these would be watches. They're "always on" and have limited space for batteries. Plus, the screen doesn't change often and people aren't expecting 60fps on their watch.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        Watch batteries last for ages anyway.

        Or do you mean those ridiculous "smart" watches?

        • Considering how many people I see with an Apple watch, I don't think the majority thinks they are ridiculous. Having to charge my watch daily is the main thing keeping me from moving to a fitness tracker to a smart watch. The rest of it is me wondering what additional FUNctionality I actually NEED strapped to my wrist vs my pocket.

          That said, I care a lot less about my phone being in my pocket when I have time/notifications on my wrist.

      • There's a huge amount of markets for this. The world is full of slow changing things that are currently a complete waste of electricity or are actively hiding the display to save power. Smart home devices, weather stations, status displays for appliances. A shitload of devices out there have powered LCD panels which pointlessly waste energy to display very slowly updating information.

      • Some have been made with eink screens. One was from a famous smartwatch company that got bought by one of the big ones. Can't remember the name.
        Also, eink is pretty useful for signs that don't need fast refresh rates. I've seen it used in: Price tags in shops, flight information screens in airports, estimated arrival times in bus stops.
        Also, a couple of companies sell eink monitors based on larger modules (25 inches). They're expensive though. Some of the 13 inch readers also have HDMI inputs so that they

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by _merlin ( 160982 )

          One was from a famous smartwatch company that got bought by one of the big ones. Can't remember the name.

          Pebble?

          • Yup. That's it

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by _merlin ( 160982 )

              The thing is, I only knew about Pebble because of how frequently they were hyped in Slashdot articles, from the Kickstarter campaign through to there insolvency, sale of assets to Fitbit, and cancellation of upcoming products. It all happened in about five years, IIRC. I never saw one in real life. I wouldn't want any of the smartwatches - I wear a Seiko Kinetic SCUBA - it takes a fair few knocks, I wear it in any weather, when diving and surfing, etc. and it's really accurate (gained 30s in about eight

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

                I had two monochrome Pebble watches. I did once see a color Pebble belonging to someone else, and I felt the color saturation left a lot to be desired. The promo picture for E-Ink in TFA here looks kind of like newsprint. Not ideal, but pretty acceptable at the same time. It would be a great improvement over the color Pebble.

                RE the Pebble itself: The first one had a screen fritz after a few months caused by battery expansion. Replaced by Pebble and the replacement lasted a couple years. The form factor was

              • I haven't seen any in real life either, and I didn't mean to prop it up. I just listed it as an application of eink. For something that refreshes so little and that it'd better be visible in strong sunlight I think eink is appropiate

        • Some of the 13 inch readers also have HDMI inputs so that they can be used as monitors too
          Wow, that is a good hint. Never thought about that.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mmell ( 832646 )
      A display you can read in direct sunlight? Sign me up! I'm moving my office outside on nice days.

    • Don't forget the BMW Color Changing Car at CES 2022. If e-ink now has a viable color display technology, perhaps we will start to see e-ink on cars in something other than shades of gray. The new Kaleido 3 is reported to use a front-light technology to increase the colors, reminiscent of the front lighting we used to add to the Nintendo Game Boy Advance, so it will be interesting to see if the absence of this on a car would affect the perceived colors.

    • The "colour e-ink" is more a dancing-bear tech than a practical tech: The miracle isn't that the bear dances well, it's that it can dance at all. Their latest, greatest looks like a washed-out EGA display from circa 1984. A very nice high-res washed-out EGA display admittedly, but nothing like any colour display you're expecting.

      Incidentally, IEEE Spectrum had a good article on how they're doing [ieee.org] it a few months ago.

  • I just want my kindle page flips to be instant. Sounds like this would get me there.

    • Yep. And video also means it can make those instant changes in rapid succession - think rapidly flipping through pages in textbooks and reference material. Though the rendering engine might become a bottleneck in extreme low energy devices.

    • I just want a Kindle with a larger screen.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jhon ( 241832 )

        "I just want a Kindle with a larger screen."

        They have that. It's called a laptop -- or a really big tablet.

      • 2 paragraphs per page isn't good enough for you?

        It's a hell of a lot better than the old 7" tablet that I stripped down enough so it lasted months on standby, but the interface sucks and it's still not a real book.

      • I'd be nice if Amazon made one but they only seem interested in the "fiction" market so they use the 6 or 7 inch panels.
        Some eink readers use Android and they can thus access the Amazon ecosystem by using the Amazon Android app. Look up reviews of the Onyx models if you're interested.
        It won't be as good as an actual Kindle but it might work for you

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

        I just want a Kindle with a larger screen.

        10.3" E-Ink Linux tablet? [pine64.org]

  • Tried searching deeper and I can't find a refresh/frame rate claim. The video looks pretty terrible to my eyes, though I loved the higher refresh monitors when they came out. Mostly it transitions through short glimpses of what might normally be interesting views. And the one place that should have animated person's facial movement jumped terribly.

    https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker... [kinja-img.com]

    Still, it's progress. Wonder how big a border each "screen" needs if they made a collage of them. Or if they could be made i

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      I was actually a bit confused by the article this screen in this product here's a GIF of a boox nova 3 and it sucks?

      what is a boox nova 3? does it have this screen in it? why am I suposta be excited about an eyestrain

  • Profitably, that is . . . and without pricing it beyond the reach of mere mortals.

  • Now we can have e-readers that are in color, for comics and things like that...and this looks even fast enough for smart watches to give them even better battery life. Great for displays too, since if it works like regular e-ink you set it once and then the driving controller can just go to sleep until the image needs to be updated.

  • This getting into a reader like Kindle or similar would probably finally convince me to upgrade from my ancient kindle. Call me a Luddite if you like, but I really like the physical page turn buttons on this old model, vs the touch screen on newer stuff. But I *might* be willing to compromise if it means good color E-Ink.

    • The higher end Kindles have haptic page turn "buttons". Not quite as good as the old physical buttons, in my opinion; but they're good enough.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      My Kindle 3 still works just fine. My wife keeps upgrading hers, so I've had a chance to play with the new models. I don't see any compelling reason to switch.

      • The built in light on the more recent ones is nice.

        My dog destroyed my Kindle 3rd gen, so I had no choice but to upgrade (got a Voyage, which unfortunately they no longer make). Overall the third generation was probably the best Kindle. It didn't have a light, but there were plenty of decent clip-on solutions... and the battery lasted near forever.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      The Kindle Oasis 3 has physical forward/back page turn buttons. They can be on either the right or left side as you like since it will rotate the on-screen contents to match the orientation.

  • Sounds like it could be impressive. If they could bring that refresh rate to their B&W panels as well, we could have e-ink ereaders that provide the best of the current ereader and tablet worlds.

  • Bring on the phones, tablets, and vehicle displays (Score:3)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Friday April 08, 2022 @11:10PM (#62431008)

    I've been waiting for decent reflective display technology to mature for years. Some day something that resembles a glossy color magazine page would make for a neat display to stare at for hours.

    As someone who works in bright sunlight, I would love a decent color e-ink phone. And a tablet too. And for years I've put up with crappy in-cab displays on tractors and farm equipment. Color LCD is great and all, but the old-school black and white LCD is ten times more readable in a cab than the color ag computer screens. I know tablets are bright enough now to work decently, but seems like the ag companies are stuck with ten year old technology. To me color e-ink, or just faster black and white e-ink would be ideal in the cab.

    I had a Yotaphone 2 with an e-ink screen that I loved. Unfortunately a screen on each side of the phone just isn't a recipe for longevity in a smartphone on the farm. But if this screen is fast enough, I wouldn't mind it being my primary screen.

    I might even be tempted if anyone produced an hdmi monitor that was color e-ink, that was faster than the current crop (not to mention overly expensive) e-ink hdmi displays.

  • Is this really what we want? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday April 09, 2022 @12:05AM (#62431074) Homepage Journal

    These things have a cycle life, right? I don't need them to be fast. If I want video in the same screen, what I want is a transparent OLED over the top of the e-paper that kicks in just for video overlays. Color is great, but what I really need is lifespan and affordability, not paper video.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Still waiting for an A4 size, cheap tablet that I can use for viewing datasheets and schematics while working on stuff.

      At the moment most people seem to settle on a computer and monitor.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

        I don't know what your threshold for cheap is, but you can look into one of these [pine64.org] for $400.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Thanks, if it makes it out of beta I'll look at getting one. There are some decent Chinese rivals on the market too, I think we are getting close to these things beginning common.

    • These things have a cycle life, right? I don't need them to be fast.

      Yeah they do. 50000 hours (almost 6 years) @ 2 second refresh intervals. I get it that people like devices which last a long time, but I don't think this e-ink should be considered your family heirloom to pass down to your grandkids one day.

      Also you want lifespan and affordability and your suggestion is to combine two of the most expensive technologies, as well as the two technologies with actual restricted lifespans on the market? Go home drinkypoo, you're drunk.

      • If the OLED is used only for video, then that takes the load off the paper for that purpose, and unless you watch video on it constantly, it won't have a short lifespan itself. It doesn't have to be particularly high resolution, and it keeps getting cheaper. I can wait. This product, which does a shit job of showing video which will reduce its lifespan more than they claim (because it always does) is for nobody.

  • I would absolutely love a color e-ink tablet. I remember seeing one about ten years ago that could do 20 FPS grayscale or 12 FPS color. If they can manage 20 FPS in color these days that seems good enough for animated menus and some videos without a ton of fast movement. Since the article doesn't state the actual refresh rate I won't get my hopes up too high though.
  • What is the frame rate and how does it scale as the area of screen changing increases? It's all very well to say you can vids but if it's at a choppy, low fps with screen artifacts then it's a novelty and nothing hugely interesting. In addition the way e-ink has colour is a really crappy technique of putting a transparent lcd in front of the e-ink layer, so it kind of looks terrible close up, like a colourized black & white photo.

    It's a pity that Mirasol didn't take off since that was a promising half

  • Nothing says e-paper like ... er ... videos!

  • (1) Part of the appeal of an e-ink device is that it *can't* be used play videos. It gets rid of potential distractions. Today, my "typewriter" comes with a built-in HD television-- and I'm old enough to remember when that wasn't the case, and I miss those days.

    One of the things I notice about social media-- and about written language in general-- is that people have started to lean on video more and more as a means of self-expression. Instead of finding the right words to convey meaning and tone, they'l

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