5 ms·

There're a few things going on that contribute to this. 1) The rumors are that some of the display manufacturers have contracts with big device makers to not s

There're a few things going on that contribute to this. 1) The rumors are that some of the display manufacturers have contracts with big device makers to not sell panels direct to consumer. I don't have evidence to verify this, though. 2) There aren't a lot of displays that exist _at all_ outside of the small/eReader/Big Sign categories. So there probably just aren't the production lines out there to push those out. 3) Since refresh rates in even the best cases aren't great, it's unlikely to get a lot of traction in most markets, so I don't think anyone is pursuing it heavily. 4) eInk (the company) seems very uninterested in the hobby market at all. They seem to want a few big contracts, and that's all they're interested in.

j88439h84 6y ago
What do you mean by 2? Monitors and TV screens fit that range, no?
- sparker72678 6y ago
  I meant no one is currently making E-ink displays of those sizes in bulk. Sorry for the confusion.
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    I believe the question you were answering was asking why that is.
    - sparker72678 6y ago
      My point was that there's no current wide-spread use of low-refresh displays in that size category, because all the obvious use cases slide around it, so there isn't going to be spillover into a new use-case when there's nothing there to spill out of. I'm probably just muddying the waters at this point.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Why would you want a monitor or a tv screen with a refresh rate of 7 fps? And that's monochrome. For actual RGB output, you need three refreshes, and the RGB ones are slower, so you might get a frame per second.
  - reificator 6y ago
    I'd be ecstatic with a monochrome 20"+ eink monitor for use after 8:00PM or so. With the F.lux settings I use on my normal monitor it's practically monochrome anyway. 7FPS is probably not quite high enough, but I've seen 10-13" displays with 15-20FPS, and that would be fine for normal computing. I'd probably swap my scrollwheel for PageUp/PageDown to make full page refreshes a little more pleasant though.
    - andai 6y ago
      There was a brief interest in transflective LCD technology in the 2000s and early 2010s but it seems to have died off (at least for consumer products), which means sunlight-readable (or candle-readable, for the evenings) LCD with high refresh rates. There was even one company (edit: Pixel Qi) putting solar cells in the displays themselves, so the device recharged while being used in sunlight. YouTube video comparing Pixel Qi in sunlight with normal backlit LCD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1mD6vhp3U8#t=1m45s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1mD6vhp3U8#t=1m45s (around 01:45)
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    7 pfs are not a showstopper for a console I don't know why one would want a huge daylight visible console, but it's one of those things where I'm just not creative enough.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      I don't know why one would want a huge daylight visible console, but it's one of those things where I'm just not creative enough. Not exactly a command line terminal, but there was an ambient signage project on HN recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323 Also https://onezero.medium.com/meet-accent-352cfa95813a https://onezero.medium.com/meet-accent-352cfa95813a
- nemo 6y ago
  A monitor sized e-ink display would be unusable as, say, a PC display. E-ink refresh rates makes e-ink useless for video, scrolling, etc. I have a feeling one's really come up with applications where a monitor/TV sized very slowly refreshing screen was useful so there's no demand.
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    > E-ink refresh rates makes e-ink useless for video, scrolling, etc. Or even simpler -- a mouse cursor is essentially unusable on an e-ink display. Much like an old passive-matrix LCD, you'd need to implement nasty workarounds like cursor trails to restore any semblance of usability.
    - totony 6y ago
      I use a tilling window manager and would love to just pop a window into an external eink display. Works for other types of wms too, just use a main display to browse and the eink to read.
    - Funes- 6y ago
      I use Dasung's e-ink monitor (Paperlike Pro) daily. A mouse cursor is fully usable. You can even watch videos on that thing. Of course, the refresh rate is far from perfect, but its performance is acceptable. I code on it, mainly.
vikramkr 6y ago
For point 4, that could be a pretty smart move on their part and the reason they're able to keep going. Selling directly to consumers/setting up the distribution and marketing for that etc would be really difficult and a lot of D2C hardware companies have not done too well recently. It's unfortunate that it results in it being difficult to access for hobby markets, but relying on large, stable contracts from a lot of big manufacturers that already built up marketing and distribution over decades of operations is probably one of the better ways to commercialize a hardware innovation today.
- hedora 6y ago
  I feel eInk’s marketing strategy has really held the technology back. They seem to want to force the technology into a few well-defined verticals that they came up with themselves instead of letting an army of smaller companies innovate rapidly. They were founded in 1997, so their earliest patents have probably expired. I wonder when the clones will arrive. Maybe they’ll have a better marketing and sales strategy.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  Those don't seem like valid reasons not to offer for sale to consumers. Distribution is a non-issue. Literally ship in a case of them to FBA or one of the countless other fulfillment operations and put up a listing. Amazon handles the customer service. As for the marketing, just don't do any. Let the hobby market find it on their own and then just set a minimum order for anyone that wants to work directly with the company for their small project. I think getting into the hobby market would amount to a huge long tail market of kickstarter style projects and other small products with potential to blow up. I really don't see how their current strategy could be that great considering how rare it is to see products out there that are e-ink.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > I think getting into the hobby market would amount to a huge long tail market of kickstarter style projects and other small products with potential to blow up. I'm trying to think of a single kickstarter-style project that generated a volume above even 100K units let alone a million. I can't think of any. BeatBuddy is probably the most successful by unit volume project I can think of, and they're probably under 10,000 units. So, the evidence is that the hobbyist market is completely useless to manufacturers.
amelius 6y ago
> The rumors are that some of the display manufacturers have contracts with big device makers to not sell panels direct to consumer. Would that be legal?
- mertd 6y ago
  How would it be illegal?
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Some otherwise fine anti-competitive behaviors are illegal when committed by monopolies.
falcolas 6y ago
IMO, Point 3 is not really a problem, at least in the e-reader usecase. Even typing isn't too bad when partial refresh is enabled. Something like VIM on a black&white panel with kindle-grade refresh options seems quite reasonable. Now then, with the linked screen's 15 second refresh time, this is obviously not the case. But it (naively) seems like a compromise to keep the cost low, since the added tech and software to enable partial refreshes would add to both price and complexity.
thebeefytaco 6y ago
I've been wanting to get some dev kits to play around with, but they're pretty expensive and not custom enough for my intended use case.

j88439h84 6y ago

What do you mean by 2? Monitors and TV screens fit that range, no?

sparker72678 6y ago
I meant no one is currently making E-ink displays of those sizes in bulk. Sorry for the confusion.
- austhrow743 6y ago
  I believe the question you were answering was asking why that is.
  - sparker72678 6y ago
    My point was that there's no current wide-spread use of low-refresh displays in that size category, because all the obvious use cases slide around it, so there isn't going to be spillover into a new use-case when there's nothing there to spill out of. I'm probably just muddying the waters at this point.
freeone3000 6y ago
Why would you want a monitor or a tv screen with a refresh rate of 7 fps? And that's monochrome. For actual RGB output, you need three refreshes, and the RGB ones are slower, so you might get a frame per second.
- reificator 6y ago
  I'd be ecstatic with a monochrome 20"+ eink monitor for use after 8:00PM or so. With the F.lux settings I use on my normal monitor it's practically monochrome anyway. 7FPS is probably not quite high enough, but I've seen 10-13" displays with 15-20FPS, and that would be fine for normal computing. I'd probably swap my scrollwheel for PageUp/PageDown to make full page refreshes a little more pleasant though.
  - andai 6y ago
    There was a brief interest in transflective LCD technology in the 2000s and early 2010s but it seems to have died off (at least for consumer products), which means sunlight-readable (or candle-readable, for the evenings) LCD with high refresh rates. There was even one company (edit: Pixel Qi) putting solar cells in the displays themselves, so the device recharged while being used in sunlight. YouTube video comparing Pixel Qi in sunlight with normal backlit LCD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1mD6vhp3U8#t=1m45s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1mD6vhp3U8#t=1m45s (around 01:45)
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  7 pfs are not a showstopper for a console I don't know why one would want a huge daylight visible console, but it's one of those things where I'm just not creative enough.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    I don't know why one would want a huge daylight visible console, but it's one of those things where I'm just not creative enough. Not exactly a command line terminal, but there was an ambient signage project on HN recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323 Also https://onezero.medium.com/meet-accent-352cfa95813a https://onezero.medium.com/meet-accent-352cfa95813a
nemo 6y ago
A monitor sized e-ink display would be unusable as, say, a PC display. E-ink refresh rates makes e-ink useless for video, scrolling, etc. I have a feeling one's really come up with applications where a monitor/TV sized very slowly refreshing screen was useful so there's no demand.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  > E-ink refresh rates makes e-ink useless for video, scrolling, etc. Or even simpler -- a mouse cursor is essentially unusable on an e-ink display. Much like an old passive-matrix LCD, you'd need to implement nasty workarounds like cursor trails to restore any semblance of usability.
  - totony 6y ago
    I use a tilling window manager and would love to just pop a window into an external eink display. Works for other types of wms too, just use a main display to browse and the eink to read.
  - Funes- 6y ago
    I use Dasung's e-ink monitor (Paperlike Pro) daily. A mouse cursor is fully usable. You can even watch videos on that thing. Of course, the refresh rate is far from perfect, but its performance is acceptable. I code on it, mainly.

vikramkr 6y ago

For point 4, that could be a pretty smart move on their part and the reason they're able to keep going. Selling directly to consumers/setting up the distribution and marketing for that etc would be really difficult and a lot of D2C hardware companies have not done too well recently. It's unfortunate that it results in it being difficult to access for hobby markets, but relying on large, stable contracts from a lot of big manufacturers that already built up marketing and distribution over decades of operations is probably one of the better ways to commercialize a hardware innovation today.

hedora 6y ago
I feel eInk’s marketing strategy has really held the technology back. They seem to want to force the technology into a few well-defined verticals that they came up with themselves instead of letting an army of smaller companies innovate rapidly. They were founded in 1997, so their earliest patents have probably expired. I wonder when the clones will arrive. Maybe they’ll have a better marketing and sales strategy.
jjeaff 6y ago
Those don't seem like valid reasons not to offer for sale to consumers. Distribution is a non-issue. Literally ship in a case of them to FBA or one of the countless other fulfillment operations and put up a listing. Amazon handles the customer service. As for the marketing, just don't do any. Let the hobby market find it on their own and then just set a minimum order for anyone that wants to work directly with the company for their small project. I think getting into the hobby market would amount to a huge long tail market of kickstarter style projects and other small products with potential to blow up. I really don't see how their current strategy could be that great considering how rare it is to see products out there that are e-ink.
- bsder 6y ago
  > I think getting into the hobby market would amount to a huge long tail market of kickstarter style projects and other small products with potential to blow up. I'm trying to think of a single kickstarter-style project that generated a volume above even 100K units let alone a million. I can't think of any. BeatBuddy is probably the most successful by unit volume project I can think of, and they're probably under 10,000 units. So, the evidence is that the hobbyist market is completely useless to manufacturers.

amelius 6y ago

> The rumors are that some of the display manufacturers have contracts with big device makers to not sell panels direct to consumer. Would that be legal?

mertd 6y ago
How would it be illegal?
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Some otherwise fine anti-competitive behaviors are illegal when committed by monopolies.

falcolas 6y ago

IMO, Point 3 is not really a problem, at least in the e-reader usecase. Even typing isn't too bad when partial refresh is enabled. Something like VIM on a black&white panel with kindle-grade refresh options seems quite reasonable. Now then, with the linked screen's 15 second refresh time, this is obviously not the case. But it (naively) seems like a compromise to keep the cost low, since the added tech and software to enable partial refreshes would add to both price and complexity.

thebeefytaco 6y ago

I've been wanting to get some dev kits to play around with, but they're pretty expensive and not custom enough for my intended use case.