> I have never been able to get an eink screen at any cost approaching the Kindle - continually, everywhere, the cheapest way to get started with eink is to ja

> I have never been able to get an eink screen at any cost approaching the Kindle - continually, everywhere, the cheapest way to get started with eink is to jailbreak a kindle and just load your own images onto it. That's true because of volume. I would never expect to be able to get a raw panel in volumes of under 10,000 units directly from a tier 1 supplier, I'd have to get it from a distributor and they'll mark up based on the volume of that specific model. If I wanted a 32" OLED display, the cheapest way for me to get it would be to buy a OLED TV and then extract the panel. If I tried to ask Samsung Displays Inc, they'd be laughing me out of the building. For niche or exotic low volume displays, the markup the distributor would apply would be large since they're holding stock for a long time. And yes, displays do go bad in storage because of accidents, soaking, wetting/corrision due to condensation, improper storage. > A 7" b&w non-backlit eink display would cost several times over that of a 5-6" kindle, which doesn't even account for the wireless chips, display board controller, or anything else, even for a loss leader. That doesn't sound right, how do you actually know the costs ad loss leader subsidy? But anyway my original question was about this so called eink patent hell that HN commentors keep talking about.