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The difference between eink and LCD is big enough that it's not even worth doing without the eink. A dim LCD newspaper on your wall would look really tacky, im

The difference between eink and LCD is big enough that it's not even worth doing without the eink. A dim LCD newspaper on your wall would look really tacky, imo. And it would very obviously just be a TV. While the eink looks amazing. I think you either have to shell out the money for eink, or don't do it at all.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
slg 6y ago
>A dim LCD newspaper on your wall would look really tacky, imo. It really depends on how you do it. They sell TV's like The Frame[1] from Samsung ($599 for the 32" version) that look much closer to a picture frame and are designed for almost this exact purpose. If you are in some semi-permanent home (you probably should be before you spend $2.7k on an art piece) it isn't much work to mount it in a way that would hide the cables. From the looks of the photos in this article, the e-Ink version isn't event mounted flush against the wall and appears to be tilted downward. I don't love the way that looks given the cost. I would much rather spend half the money on that TV and a professional mounting. [1] - https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-frame/32-class-the-frame-qled-hdr-smart-tv-2020-qn32ls03tbfxza/ https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-...
- thefounder 6y ago
  You compare a lcd tv with eink....apples <--> oranges.
  - slg 6y ago
    I am comparing the use case and not the technology. I am comparing one art piece to another art piece.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  The average power consumption of The Frame is 118 W (figure provided by Samsung). The average power consumption of an e-ink display that refreshes once daily and needs a single annual recharge is effectively 0 W. Using a rough price of electricity in San Francisco of just over $0.22/kWh, The Frame costs ~$230/yr to run. I don't know if I could, in good conscience, countenance wasting that much electricity on running a TV 24/7 to show a static image that updates once daily. Yes, you'd have to be running the e-ink display for awhile to break even on the power costs, and you could save some money on The Frame by putting it on a schedule where it turns off at night, but it still seems overly wasteful.
  - google234123 6y ago
    Damn, electricity is expensive in SF.
    - AdamN 6y ago
      What's your local rate?
    - winter7 6y ago
      Expensive? Electricity is dirtcheap is the US. Try Germany, i pay 0.32 € per KW/h.
      - hhh 6y ago
        $0.1038/kWh where I live in the states.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - shiftpgdn 6y ago
        Do you guys have variable rate plans? In Texas I pay spot rate updating every 5 minutes. There is a 3c/kwh fee regardless of price. Most of the time it's 2-3c/kwh however it occasionally goes to $1-9/kwh. At night it's usually .01c to sometimes well into the negatives where I get paid to use electricity. As you can imagine I charge my electric car at night and in average it only costs me about $2-3 per 1000 miles of range.
- noahtallen 6y ago
  To me, the poor look would be from the LCD being its own light source. The e-ink screen makes it look like a proper piece of paper since it’s illuminated by outside light. I think that really changes the concept. If I want a TV hanging on the wall, that’s easy enough (as you say). If I want a daily newspaper hanging on the wall looking like the real thing, I bet e-ink looks a lot better.
- detaro 6y ago
  In the showroom The Frame looks indeed quite good, but I'd be worried about how it looks in less optimized spaces (i.e. dimly, unevenly lit). And they reserve the "Art mode" adjustments to their specific app for it, so you're very limited in using it for your own content.
jeffbee 6y ago
I've seen this hack in person and it is very convincing. The way to avoid the backlight problem is to frontlight the whole scene. This embedded imac also has the cool feature of never changing if someone is looking at it. https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels
- renewiltord 6y ago
  That is an incredible artwork (the device). I only caught the right one on the second viewing of the light changes. However, it uses an equivalently expensive piece of hardware, right? The LG 5k from Apple is $1300.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Yeah minimum $1300 and you're cutting a hole in your wall.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    And it uses a few hundreds bucks of electricity per year to run it 24/7, depending on your electricity cost anyway (I'm using CA here).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jay_kyburz 6y ago
I was in the mall just a few minutes ago, and while I was waiting for a coffee I was standing next to one of those movie-poster billboard things that have TV in them. Every few seconds a poster for a movie, or cleaning product, or some store would pop up, each had some subtle animation. They were really high res, 4k perhaps. Really nice and crisp. Anyhow, I was thinking how great the images on them were.
0-_-0 6y ago
With a light sensor you could adjust the colour of an LCD display so it exactly simulates the light reflected by paper. I don't understand why nobody did it before. Now you can't patent it though because this comment serves as prior art :)
- mholm 6y ago
  The Samsung Frame TV does this already, to some success.
  - skavi 6y ago
    The comment is sarcastic I think. This has been done by many companies.
- gh02t 6y ago
  I've also noticed this on my Google Home/Nest Hub, where it has an effect where it adjusts the image on screen to match the color temperature of the ambient light. It makes for a really weird (albeit pleasant) effect that to my eye makes the image look more like a printed/reflective image. I've long wondered if you could duplicate that effect by replacing the backlighting in a junk LCD with something that can adjust color temperature and adding a color sensor, but haven't had time to try it.
- drone 6y ago
  Yes, these sorts of things are common in photography workflows. There are color profilers [ex: 0] that update your monitor's profile in real time to maintain a consistent profile given ambient light changes. They're usually used as part of a larger calibration workflow, for example: calibrating your monitor and printer so that what you print with a specific ink/paper combination looks exactly like what you see on the screen. (Or, as much as is technically possible to do so.) [0] - https://www.xrite.com/categories/calibration-profiling/i1display-pro https://www.xrite.com/categories/calibration-profiling/i1dis...
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    That's really cool! Thank you!
jMyles 6y ago
> A dim LCD newspaper on your wall would look really tacky, imo. In fairness, any display of a newspaper who so bombastically trumpeted the US into war with Iraq is kinda tacky.
AntiImperialist 6y ago
Not so amazing if I want the Playboy cover instead of some irrelevant fake news.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

slg 6y ago

>A dim LCD newspaper on your wall would look really tacky, imo. It really depends on how you do it. They sell TV's like The Frame[1] from Samsung ($599 for the 32" version) that look much closer to a picture frame and are designed for almost this exact purpose. If you are in some semi-permanent home (you probably should be before you spend $2.7k on an art piece) it isn't much work to mount it in a way that would hide the cables. From the looks of the photos in this article, the e-Ink version isn't event mounted flush against the wall and appears to be tilted downward. I don't love the way that looks given the cost. I would much rather spend half the money on that TV and a professional mounting. [1] - https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-frame/32-class-the-frame-qled-hdr-smart-tv-2020-qn32ls03tbfxza/ https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-...

thefounder 6y ago
You compare a lcd tv with eink....apples <--> oranges.
- slg 6y ago
  I am comparing the use case and not the technology. I am comparing one art piece to another art piece.
CydeWeys 6y ago
The average power consumption of The Frame is 118 W (figure provided by Samsung). The average power consumption of an e-ink display that refreshes once daily and needs a single annual recharge is effectively 0 W. Using a rough price of electricity in San Francisco of just over $0.22/kWh, The Frame costs ~$230/yr to run. I don't know if I could, in good conscience, countenance wasting that much electricity on running a TV 24/7 to show a static image that updates once daily. Yes, you'd have to be running the e-ink display for awhile to break even on the power costs, and you could save some money on The Frame by putting it on a schedule where it turns off at night, but it still seems overly wasteful.
- google234123 6y ago
  Damn, electricity is expensive in SF.
  - AdamN 6y ago
    What's your local rate?
  - winter7 6y ago
    Expensive? Electricity is dirtcheap is the US. Try Germany, i pay 0.32 € per KW/h.
    - hhh 6y ago
      $0.1038/kWh where I live in the states.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - shiftpgdn 6y ago
      Do you guys have variable rate plans? In Texas I pay spot rate updating every 5 minutes. There is a 3c/kwh fee regardless of price. Most of the time it's 2-3c/kwh however it occasionally goes to $1-9/kwh. At night it's usually .01c to sometimes well into the negatives where I get paid to use electricity. As you can imagine I charge my electric car at night and in average it only costs me about $2-3 per 1000 miles of range.
noahtallen 6y ago
To me, the poor look would be from the LCD being its own light source. The e-ink screen makes it look like a proper piece of paper since it’s illuminated by outside light. I think that really changes the concept. If I want a TV hanging on the wall, that’s easy enough (as you say). If I want a daily newspaper hanging on the wall looking like the real thing, I bet e-ink looks a lot better.
detaro 6y ago
In the showroom The Frame looks indeed quite good, but I'd be worried about how it looks in less optimized spaces (i.e. dimly, unevenly lit). And they reserve the "Art mode" adjustments to their specific app for it, so you're very limited in using it for your own content.

jeffbee 6y ago

I've seen this hack in person and it is very convincing. The way to avoid the backlight problem is to frontlight the whole scene. This embedded imac also has the cool feature of never changing if someone is looking at it. https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels

renewiltord 6y ago
That is an incredible artwork (the device). I only caught the right one on the second viewing of the light changes. However, it uses an equivalently expensive piece of hardware, right? The LG 5k from Apple is $1300.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Yeah minimum $1300 and you're cutting a hole in your wall.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  And it uses a few hundreds bucks of electricity per year to run it 24/7, depending on your electricity cost anyway (I'm using CA here).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

jay_kyburz 6y ago

I was in the mall just a few minutes ago, and while I was waiting for a coffee I was standing next to one of those movie-poster billboard things that have TV in them. Every few seconds a poster for a movie, or cleaning product, or some store would pop up, each had some subtle animation. They were really high res, 4k perhaps. Really nice and crisp. Anyhow, I was thinking how great the images on them were.

0-_-0 6y ago

With a light sensor you could adjust the colour of an LCD display so it exactly simulates the light reflected by paper. I don't understand why nobody did it before. Now you can't patent it though because this comment serves as prior art :)

mholm 6y ago
The Samsung Frame TV does this already, to some success.
- skavi 6y ago
  The comment is sarcastic I think. This has been done by many companies.
gh02t 6y ago
I've also noticed this on my Google Home/Nest Hub, where it has an effect where it adjusts the image on screen to match the color temperature of the ambient light. It makes for a really weird (albeit pleasant) effect that to my eye makes the image look more like a printed/reflective image. I've long wondered if you could duplicate that effect by replacing the backlighting in a junk LCD with something that can adjust color temperature and adding a color sensor, but haven't had time to try it.
drone 6y ago
Yes, these sorts of things are common in photography workflows. There are color profilers [ex: 0] that update your monitor's profile in real time to maintain a consistent profile given ambient light changes. They're usually used as part of a larger calibration workflow, for example: calibrating your monitor and printer so that what you print with a specific ink/paper combination looks exactly like what you see on the screen. (Or, as much as is technically possible to do so.) [0] - https://www.xrite.com/categories/calibration-profiling/i1display-pro https://www.xrite.com/categories/calibration-profiling/i1dis...
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  That's really cool! Thank you!

jMyles 6y ago

> A dim LCD newspaper on your wall would look really tacky, imo. In fairness, any display of a newspaper who so bombastically trumpeted the US into war with Iraq is kinda tacky.

AntiImperialist 6y ago

Not so amazing if I want the Playboy cover instead of some irrelevant fake news.