4 ms·

im not familiar with this industry but how far are we from magazine quality look and feel using eInk? like there is a scene from an old 80s sci-fi movie dude

im not familiar with this industry but how far are we from magazine quality look and feel using eInk? like there is a scene from an old 80s sci-fi movie dude whips out a game magazine and the screenshot of games are fully animated videos... ive been waiting 30 years now for this tech

sedatk 2y ago
I believe we need to wait for e-ink patents to expire.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  I'm surprised the eink patent holders are seemingly content to lose their patent in time instead of licensing it and making real money
  - braunboffel 2y ago
    > I'm surprised the eink patent holders are seemingly content to lose their patent in time instead of licensing it and making real money and I'm surprised I keep reading such claims on HN and everytime anyone ask which patent you're referring to, you get no concrete answer. It is like saying "microsoft holds lots of patents on operating systems" and that's why operating systems are so terrible and everyone is still using windows.
- Qwertious 2y ago
  The core patents already have expired. They have competition, it's called Reinkstone (and their DES/cofferdam tech). The reason e-inks are so expensive and progressing so slowly is that it's a niche product which doesn't drive much R&D spending (compared to LCDs, which sell billions per quarter and you're reading this comment on).
  - sedatk 2y ago
    Didn’t know that they expired. That’s good news. We just need exciting products now.
    - Qwertious 2y ago
      It's not exciting, because the patents were never a barrier to innovation in the first place. LCDs have patents up the wazoo, it doesn't stop innovation there. The core problem with e-ink - the lack of market to justify R&D spending - hasn't really changed.
    - braunboffel 2y ago
      > We just need exciting products now. Will you be working on such a product? :-D
PaulStatezny 2y ago
Given the couple years I spent using a Dasung Paperlike e-ink monitor, I think we're pretty far off from that. There seems to be a direct tradeoff between contrast/image-brilliance and latency/frames-per-second. Many monitors can be switched along that spectrum, but the current tech doesn't seem to be able to deliver both simultaneously at a reasonable price.
- ant6n 2y ago
  As a not so proud owner of a Dasung color I have to agree. The product is absolutely atrocious. It has like 8 colors, not thousands. The contrast is shit, „white“ is brown, black is … some darker brown. It’s reflective. It heavily relies on unstable dithering (so moving the mouse will jitter around a large area of nearby pixels), which also makes everything unreadable. The color processing is shit, it won’t even try to approximate displayed colors with the ones it can display. You have to fight with the settings to just get something that is vaguely usable, and set up the OS with custom colors and an accessible theme. But even then it’s so much more straining to use than a normal monitor, because of the reflections and shit contrast. I think you could probably get something more useful by building a 28“ wall paper of game boy colors. Worst purchase ever.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    What we need is a structural color display, using octopus proteins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration#Variable_structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration#Variable...
Rebelgecko 2y ago
A lot of the components you'd need for that sorta kinda exist: Flexible e-ink displays Color eink displays High-ish refresh rate eink displays The problem is AFAICT there's no device that covers all 3. Color displays have pretty big tradeoffs in terms of resolution/contrast/latency. However they're still way ahead of where they were 5-10 years ago.

sedatk 2y ago

I believe we need to wait for e-ink patents to expire.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
I'm surprised the eink patent holders are seemingly content to lose their patent in time instead of licensing it and making real money
- braunboffel 2y ago
  > I'm surprised the eink patent holders are seemingly content to lose their patent in time instead of licensing it and making real money and I'm surprised I keep reading such claims on HN and everytime anyone ask which patent you're referring to, you get no concrete answer. It is like saying "microsoft holds lots of patents on operating systems" and that's why operating systems are so terrible and everyone is still using windows.
Qwertious 2y ago
The core patents already have expired. They have competition, it's called Reinkstone (and their DES/cofferdam tech). The reason e-inks are so expensive and progressing so slowly is that it's a niche product which doesn't drive much R&D spending (compared to LCDs, which sell billions per quarter and you're reading this comment on).
- sedatk 2y ago
  Didn’t know that they expired. That’s good news. We just need exciting products now.
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    It's not exciting, because the patents were never a barrier to innovation in the first place. LCDs have patents up the wazoo, it doesn't stop innovation there. The core problem with e-ink - the lack of market to justify R&D spending - hasn't really changed.
  - braunboffel 2y ago
    > We just need exciting products now. Will you be working on such a product? :-D

PaulStatezny 2y ago

Given the couple years I spent using a Dasung Paperlike e-ink monitor, I think we're pretty far off from that. There seems to be a direct tradeoff between contrast/image-brilliance and latency/frames-per-second. Many monitors can be switched along that spectrum, but the current tech doesn't seem to be able to deliver both simultaneously at a reasonable price.

ant6n 2y ago
As a not so proud owner of a Dasung color I have to agree. The product is absolutely atrocious. It has like 8 colors, not thousands. The contrast is shit, „white“ is brown, black is … some darker brown. It’s reflective. It heavily relies on unstable dithering (so moving the mouse will jitter around a large area of nearby pixels), which also makes everything unreadable. The color processing is shit, it won’t even try to approximate displayed colors with the ones it can display. You have to fight with the settings to just get something that is vaguely usable, and set up the OS with custom colors and an accessible theme. But even then it’s so much more straining to use than a normal monitor, because of the reflections and shit contrast. I think you could probably get something more useful by building a 28“ wall paper of game boy colors. Worst purchase ever.
- card_zero 2y ago
  What we need is a structural color display, using octopus proteins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration#Variable_structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration#Variable...

Rebelgecko 2y ago

A lot of the components you'd need for that sorta kinda exist: Flexible e-ink displays Color eink displays High-ish refresh rate eink displays The problem is AFAICT there's no device that covers all 3. Color displays have pretty big tradeoffs in terms of resolution/contrast/latency. However they're still way ahead of where they were 5-10 years ago.