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(Immediately checks for author affiliation to eInk or some bullshit mid-tier American university with an "up and coming" tech transfer office) Awesome, maybe th

(Immediately checks for author affiliation to eInk or some bullshit mid-tier American university with an "up and coming" tech transfer office) Awesome, maybe this will actually come to market with a reasonable license fee!

robinsoh 5y ago
> (Immediately checks for author affiliation to eInk or some bullshit mid-tier American university with an "up and coming" tech transfer office) Awesome, maybe this will actually come to market with a reasonable license fee! Uhm... I just want to say that I work in the display industry and have never heard comments like yours from my peers, or during conferences. Is there some unreasonable license fee going on that those of us who actually work in the display industry aren't aware of? The main place I've seen this refrain is repeatedly on HN including a HN comment that got cited by Boing Boing and blogs and then subsequent HN comments that cited those blogs and Boing Boing as their refrence. 1 Infinite Loop! Please have a look at my comment history as I keep asking about which patent or Eink misbehavior people are talking about. I'm still trying to figure out if the issue is real or some kind of Dunning Kruger effect from software people frustrated about the "slow" progress in displays. This would be the equivalent of a bunch of my display industry people coming on our display industry forums claiming that Google is blocking search engine progress, refusing to license search engine technology, and blocking technology from progressing and then justifying that claim by then giving you a set of Google patents and then shouting, see there's the clear proof that Google is a bad actor. I hope the analogy is clear and that it is also clear why I remain unconvinced about both!
- benrbray 5y ago
  I don't have a horse in this race, but I have often heard in these threads the rumor that the reason the Remarkable E-Ink tablet cannot be fully open-source is due to restrictive licenses for the E-ink technology they use. Basically people are upset (understandably) that they're holding this amazing technology in their hands but are not free to use it to its full potential, as the actual Remarkable software is pretty limited, despite running on Linux. I don't have any idea of whether this is really true or not, but at least it's a falsifiable claim that might help you or someone knowledgeable pin down the origin :)
  - robinsoh 5y ago
    > but I have often heard in these threads the rumor that the reason the Remarkable E-Ink tablet cannot be fully open-source is due to restrictive licenses for the E-ink technology they use. isn't the founder of Remarkable an HN user? I am interested to knoww for sure if this is a fact. Is EInk is violating on infringing upon the GPL? > Basically people are upset (understandably) that they're holding this amazing technology in their hands but are not free to use it to its full potential, I think my understanding of the technology and its potential is different than what marketing people may be saying. Let me paste what I wrote before about it. " I work in the display industry. My take is neither will happen. Lets start with B. > B) Color e-ink displays get good enough for interactive use, movie watching, etc. There is no commercially sold genuine color e-ink today. Kaleido is a grayscale e-ink with a color filter laminated on top. Kaleido Plus is just the same with a light guide. E Ink did show off a genuine color display back in 2018 called Advanced Color and marketed as "Gallery". But it would take 30s to display an image and it was 32 colors or 16 colors. Not 16-bit color. I mean only 16 colors. E Ink tried to get the industry to buy in and start making products using this technology but nobody really signed on. They revamped their production to then start producing 7 color panels in much smaller sizes like 5" for signage. I heard that hasn't hit the numbers they needed to even cover their RnD costs. I doubt it will be a commercial success. When you say "good enough for movie watching", I'll say that'll never ever happen with electrophoresis. You can't violate physics. Either a pigment particle moves slowly and stably or it moves fast and is unstable. You'll never be able to get both. That's why newer technologies by various startups like ClearInk sacrifice the bi-stability in order to get fast video speeds. But look at the market response, the market isn't exactly embracing that either. Venture capitalists aren't exactly eager to fund the billions needed to create new display tech when they could invest in some new internet services startup or AI/ML startup instead. As for A), these are all emissive technologies. They will by their physics always be distinguishable from paper. As to whether you'll care or not, that is something I can't predict. "
    - baybal2 5y ago
      > When you say "good enough for movie watching", I'll say that'll never ever happen with electrophoresis. You can't violate physics. Either a pigment particle moves slowly and stably or it moves fast and is unstable Do you remember mirasol display? You don't necessarily need pigments to produce colours.
- bbarnett 5y ago
  Found the eink employee. Kidding! You do make some interesting points re: licensing and patents and such. I think the complaint I hear leveled, is that there is a patent, and it is licensed, but at exhobrinant cost. Thus, eink is "too expensive" for true derivative innovation, and even widespread sale. You might do better to speak to that accusation directly. In high school economics, we learned of min/max pricing theory. If you price your widgets at 100 dollars profit per unit, you'll sell 10 of them a year. If you price them at 1 buck per, you'll sell 1000. But... you'll have additional support costs, returns, other ancillary costs when selling 1000 units compared to 10. So at the 1 profit price point, you need additional staff, larger facilities, more manufacturing capability, etc. Sometimes, licensing is like this. Fewer units sold, but better profit. Maybe the eink lads believe the tech can never scale beyond niche, won't take off, so are just milking the market at the highest licensing fees they can get? Maybe even raw licensing, without per unit sale fees? Thus, higher up front costs, as no confidence i sales numbers? Plus no internal audit costs with licensing, sales, compliance? Just thoughts on why the high licensing costs, may be true.
  - robinsoh 5y ago
    > You might do better to speak to that accusation directly. That's the thing. I'm trying to figure out exactly what the accusation is. So far, every time I've challenged comments made about this, people have been vague and unwilling to state anything verifiable. To be frank, I don't even think any of the people making those comments are actually display people. > Maybe the eink lads believe the tech can never scale beyond niche, won't take off, so are just milking the market at the highest licensing fees they can get? I don't even know what the meaning of "eink licenses their technology" would mean. That's way too vague. It would be the equivalent of saying "Samsung Displays licenses their technology". All I know is that Eink sells electrophoretic FPL and then their various partners produce things using that FPL. You can buy miles of their FPL if you want for dollars per yard or something like that. You can drive it using your own tech, laminate whatever backplane you want to it. What I know for sure is the high volume displays like the ones that go into Kindles are cheap, and everything else is like 10x more expensive simply because they're so low volume they might as well be hand assembled.

robinsoh 5y ago

> (Immediately checks for author affiliation to eInk or some bullshit mid-tier American university with an "up and coming" tech transfer office) Awesome, maybe this will actually come to market with a reasonable license fee! Uhm... I just want to say that I work in the display industry and have never heard comments like yours from my peers, or during conferences. Is there some unreasonable license fee going on that those of us who actually work in the display industry aren't aware of? The main place I've seen this refrain is repeatedly on HN including a HN comment that got cited by Boing Boing and blogs and then subsequent HN comments that cited those blogs and Boing Boing as their refrence. 1 Infinite Loop! Please have a look at my comment history as I keep asking about which patent or Eink misbehavior people are talking about. I'm still trying to figure out if the issue is real or some kind of Dunning Kruger effect from software people frustrated about the "slow" progress in displays. This would be the equivalent of a bunch of my display industry people coming on our display industry forums claiming that Google is blocking search engine progress, refusing to license search engine technology, and blocking technology from progressing and then justifying that claim by then giving you a set of Google patents and then shouting, see there's the clear proof that Google is a bad actor. I hope the analogy is clear and that it is also clear why I remain unconvinced about both!

benrbray 5y ago
I don't have a horse in this race, but I have often heard in these threads the rumor that the reason the Remarkable E-Ink tablet cannot be fully open-source is due to restrictive licenses for the E-ink technology they use. Basically people are upset (understandably) that they're holding this amazing technology in their hands but are not free to use it to its full potential, as the actual Remarkable software is pretty limited, despite running on Linux. I don't have any idea of whether this is really true or not, but at least it's a falsifiable claim that might help you or someone knowledgeable pin down the origin :)
- robinsoh 5y ago
  > but I have often heard in these threads the rumor that the reason the Remarkable E-Ink tablet cannot be fully open-source is due to restrictive licenses for the E-ink technology they use. isn't the founder of Remarkable an HN user? I am interested to knoww for sure if this is a fact. Is EInk is violating on infringing upon the GPL? > Basically people are upset (understandably) that they're holding this amazing technology in their hands but are not free to use it to its full potential, I think my understanding of the technology and its potential is different than what marketing people may be saying. Let me paste what I wrote before about it. " I work in the display industry. My take is neither will happen. Lets start with B. > B) Color e-ink displays get good enough for interactive use, movie watching, etc. There is no commercially sold genuine color e-ink today. Kaleido is a grayscale e-ink with a color filter laminated on top. Kaleido Plus is just the same with a light guide. E Ink did show off a genuine color display back in 2018 called Advanced Color and marketed as "Gallery". But it would take 30s to display an image and it was 32 colors or 16 colors. Not 16-bit color. I mean only 16 colors. E Ink tried to get the industry to buy in and start making products using this technology but nobody really signed on. They revamped their production to then start producing 7 color panels in much smaller sizes like 5" for signage. I heard that hasn't hit the numbers they needed to even cover their RnD costs. I doubt it will be a commercial success. When you say "good enough for movie watching", I'll say that'll never ever happen with electrophoresis. You can't violate physics. Either a pigment particle moves slowly and stably or it moves fast and is unstable. You'll never be able to get both. That's why newer technologies by various startups like ClearInk sacrifice the bi-stability in order to get fast video speeds. But look at the market response, the market isn't exactly embracing that either. Venture capitalists aren't exactly eager to fund the billions needed to create new display tech when they could invest in some new internet services startup or AI/ML startup instead. As for A), these are all emissive technologies. They will by their physics always be distinguishable from paper. As to whether you'll care or not, that is something I can't predict. "
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > When you say "good enough for movie watching", I'll say that'll never ever happen with electrophoresis. You can't violate physics. Either a pigment particle moves slowly and stably or it moves fast and is unstable Do you remember mirasol display? You don't necessarily need pigments to produce colours.
bbarnett 5y ago
Found the eink employee. Kidding! You do make some interesting points re: licensing and patents and such. I think the complaint I hear leveled, is that there is a patent, and it is licensed, but at exhobrinant cost. Thus, eink is "too expensive" for true derivative innovation, and even widespread sale. You might do better to speak to that accusation directly. In high school economics, we learned of min/max pricing theory. If you price your widgets at 100 dollars profit per unit, you'll sell 10 of them a year. If you price them at 1 buck per, you'll sell 1000. But... you'll have additional support costs, returns, other ancillary costs when selling 1000 units compared to 10. So at the 1 profit price point, you need additional staff, larger facilities, more manufacturing capability, etc. Sometimes, licensing is like this. Fewer units sold, but better profit. Maybe the eink lads believe the tech can never scale beyond niche, won't take off, so are just milking the market at the highest licensing fees they can get? Maybe even raw licensing, without per unit sale fees? Thus, higher up front costs, as no confidence i sales numbers? Plus no internal audit costs with licensing, sales, compliance? Just thoughts on why the high licensing costs, may be true.
- robinsoh 5y ago
  > You might do better to speak to that accusation directly. That's the thing. I'm trying to figure out exactly what the accusation is. So far, every time I've challenged comments made about this, people have been vague and unwilling to state anything verifiable. To be frank, I don't even think any of the people making those comments are actually display people. > Maybe the eink lads believe the tech can never scale beyond niche, won't take off, so are just milking the market at the highest licensing fees they can get? I don't even know what the meaning of "eink licenses their technology" would mean. That's way too vague. It would be the equivalent of saying "Samsung Displays licenses their technology". All I know is that Eink sells electrophoretic FPL and then their various partners produce things using that FPL. You can buy miles of their FPL if you want for dollars per yard or something like that. You can drive it using your own tech, laminate whatever backplane you want to it. What I know for sure is the high volume displays like the ones that go into Kindles are cheap, and everything else is like 10x more expensive simply because they're so low volume they might as well be hand assembled.