E Ink Corp. announces "Vizplex" tech to speed, brighten displays

E Ink's first-gen electronic ink tech powers a nice little crop of e-books and a few other miscellaneous gadgets, but the slow refresh and less-than-stellar contrast offered by current devices have held them back from wider acceptance. The E Ink folks are attempting to address some these problems with the new Vizplex display technology, which doubles refresh speeds, and boosts brightness by 20 percent. E Ink is also planning to expand much further beyond those cookie cutter 6-inch e-books, with 1.9-inch, 5-inch, 6-inch, 8-inch and 9.7-inch display sizes. E Ink has also prepped a new "Metronome Display Controller" which boosts grayscale depth, and supports more sizes and resolutions, while also offering better integration with other device components to reduce costs. The developer kit for these news new displays and components is out now, so it's just a matter of time before manufactures manage to finagle them into a new line of cookie cutter e-books.

[Dylan @ May 10th 2007 12:54AM]

1.9 inch?

These E-ink displays need about 5 years of developement before they're even relatively usefull. At this point in time, the quality and price can be trumped by any number of the lighter tablets on the market.

[Othello @ May 10th 2007 2:03AM]

I'm dying for the price to come down on this tech. From the sound of it this might help a fair bit.

[Elwyn Jenkins @ May 10th 2007 2:16AM]

Still can't see myself reading this in bed. There is something comforting about having actual pages to read and feeling the weight of what I have already read as opposed to what I am about to read. There is something exciting about reading pages.

[guilt+1 @ May 10th 2007 2:24AM]

I would say cost has prevented mass uptake far more than low contrast and slow refresh rates. Most long term users of the Sony reader and the Iliad both report that you get used to the refresh time and barely notice it. It's roughly the same time as turning a physical page.

The likes of the Sony reader is officially only available in the US right now. That limits its market and iRex are asking a hell of a lot of cash for their offering and have limited availability.

From a global point of view there just aren't that many big players in the game yet and so price and availability affect the market more than tech limitations.


That said these advances are far from unwelcome and furtherance of what I perceive to be a great technology is only a good thing.

[Khisanthus @ May 10th 2007 3:26AM]

Actually, the only problem with reading in bed is lighting. If you have poor lighting, you will find that its just a tad harder to read than paper. With lighting (which you SHOULD have anyway), it works perfectly and VASTLY superior to a tablet pc...For its purpose.

[saq @ May 10th 2007 5:00AM]

"Boost brightness by about 20%"
Since e-ink displays are not self-luminescent wouldn't that be "Boost contrast"?

I like the idea of e-ink displays and ebooks a lot but its just definitely not there yet.

I think the hurdles they need to get over are as follows.
1: Price - This is the biggest issue anywhere, get a good e-book down to 199 and talking a new ballgame, an above poster said new hardbacks are $25 so this definitely puts it into a position thats easier to swallow for alot more people.
2: Input - It seems nonintuitive but I think its a big point. I think the number of people who buy a cheap laptop to use as a portable DVD player is much greater than the number of people who spend nearly as much on a small portable DVD player.
If you could take notes at school on your ebook, doodle or do other minor computing tasks that would certainly add a lot of value. I know I'd probably start heavily considering getting an e-book that had a good touchscreen/digitizer so I could take notes at work and draw out things. The formfactor of an e-book is certainly more ideal for a lot of things where I don't really need the functionality of a tablet PC.
3: Distribution of e-books. Until a consumer can safely know that all of the books he might want to purchase are available for an e-book, I think e-books are going to be a tough sell. If all of the academic companies put their stuff in ebooks I think that would change the e-book landscape dramatically.

[Castle @ May 10th 2007 7:50AM]

I've been using the Sony E-reader a lot recently, but the main issue with it is the screen size, which makes large PDF viewing useless. The contrast on small text are terrible on PDF, the refresh is only an issue if you are flipping through a lot of pages, it doesn't really bother me when I'm reading and going from one page to the next; but faster will be nicer.

however, the thing works wonders on text(txt) files, and I prefer reading it to standard book due to its size and the fact that you can change the font size is incredibly useful in low-light and certain situations (like when you're on the move).

[Muu @ May 10th 2007 9:14AM]

I wonder why someone like Sony isn't trying out a subsidized subscription model yet. If you get unlimited access to books @ 30 bucks a month or so and get to pay off your eBook while you're at it, these things might generate some interest. Locking people in like this is definitely a good idea, since I can see a good number of people sharing eBooks (well, more than there are now) once readers become more accessible.

[Alex @ May 10th 2007 10:11AM]

This is good news, but until I can have a letter-sized screen with full color, I won't be buying one. Having a full-sized screen with color would make eInk a very worthwhile product for the average consumer. You'd be able to view nearly any book or document ever created. Personally, I think being able to store and read full-color comic books on an e-book would be amazing.

[Anthony @ May 10th 2007 10:36AM]

I've had the Sony Reader almost since it came out & am a big advocate (& as a librarian I have a fair amount of history w/ physical books). However, I must say that my one complaint *is* the brightness. Even the "white" is kind of "grey" & so when you're in conditions that aren't ideal the text isn't as sharp as it could be.

Still, I think that this is great technology & certainly look forward to the Reader 2.

[Tim @ May 10th 2007 12:33PM]

1. Smaller sizes are for things like simplified cellphone interfaces or PDA screens. My ideal would be a less-than-PDA: something I can just scribble on, save, start a new page, erase a page. No USB port or PC connectivity - thereby hopefully making it much thinner.

2. Why is everyone so focused on color for these things? Good black-and-white / greyscale can be very effective: as 1st generation Macs combined with 1st generation Laserwriters proved years ago.

[Castle @ May 10th 2007 12:59PM]

>>No USB port or PC connectivity - thereby hopefully making it much thinner.

The current Sony Ebook uses mini-USB and takes up barely any space.

>>Why is everyone so focused on color for these things?

Color is a few years away for E-ink, but I agree its not necessary. The readability of this is far superior to that of LCD displays. For reading its perfect. The main thing they need to do is drop the price to below dramatically.

[Cal @ May 10th 2007 1:38PM]

The Iliad by iRex does allow for notetaking or writing on documents. Previously, there was a lot to be desired, but now that they are compatible with mobipocket and can zoom and rotate for pdfs, things are much better. I really like mine, although yes, the screen needs to be whiter, larger, the refresh faster, and the software improved. Oh and please cut the cost to something more reasonable. I can't believe I paid twice as much as a budget laptop for a device that can only read and scribble. But then again, I'd much rather use this while on the train than open up a a laptop which 3-5x as much, last a few hours, needs to boot up, etc.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ May 10th 2007 2:40PM]

I like idea of Hanlin ebook readers which have secondary - smallish - LCD screen for all little things, like MP3 playback info, time, battery info, etc.

Idea is very similar to Nintendo DS: two displays each made for two orthogonal things. Bigger slower e-Ink - for book reading. Often updated status info - on smaller LCD screen which can be turned off to save power.

[Bob @ May 11th 2007 12:57PM]

"which doubles refresh speeds"
If you double the refresh speed would that not take longer? I think it should be "halves" the refresh speed.

[Bob @ May 10th 2007 10:49AM]

No, halving the speed would double the time taken.
So double speed means less time.


What I would want for an e-book reader (apart from great screen size and contrast), is the possibility to write notes that would stick to the pages just as on real paper.