NEC tiling e-ink displays for massive coverage

What's better than a single low-power e-ink display? How about eight of them stuck together to form one massive sheet? NEC is indicating it can now tile up to eight displays together to achieve maximum reflective real estate, composed of digital sheets matching standard A4 (8.3- x 11.7-inches) and A3 (11.5- × 16.5-inches) sizes, the latter having only a 1mm border. Eight of those stitched in two rows of four could make a display nearly two feet tall and over five feet wide. No resolution specs are given, and the 10:1 contrast ratio is standard stuff, but these displays do offer 16-shades of grayscale -- four times that offered by Oprah's new favorite thing. Naturally, there's no mention of when we can hope to start covering our walls with these things, but hopefully NEC will get these out in time for the e-ink market to take off in the latter-half of 2009.

[hexoDAT64 @ Oct 28th 2008 8:33AM]

Hopefully this means we can get something like a Digital Textbook soon.

[Bob @ Oct 28th 2008 9:36AM]

Yay! Then they will probably "lease" your college textbooks to you and make you pay for damages.

[strider_mt2k @ Oct 28th 2008 8:36AM]

Wow, 16 shades of gray!

So, what that's like, dove, gunmetal, stone, hearth, uh...stone...

[Bob @ Oct 28th 2008 9:37AM]

Don't forget aluminum, cloudy day, depressed, flint... Wow, I spent too much time coming up with those...

[matt. @ Oct 28th 2008 9:06AM]

Waits on the 'It's not in color, there's no back light, I can do more on my ___insert favorite gadget that also reads eBook files here___" folks to step up to the plate. Missing of course the entire point of e-ink once again.

This is a great step forward for those of us that do get it. Can't wait to see what applications become available with this new achievement; textbooks, (school kids will have it soo much better than we did carrying around 50#'s of books between classes...) 500 different cookbooks on a thin screen that can be clipped to a cabinet to clear up workspace... Researchers that can carry hundreds of reference books at any given time...

Can't wait!

[Damo @ Oct 28th 2008 9:12AM]

Why is there no backlight? My iPod touch can do all of this AND it plays movies, displays ebooks etc. I really don't see the point of e-ink, it's not even in colour.

(/troll)

[j_g_puff @ Oct 28th 2008 9:35AM]

Good point, Damo.

Someone should have told NEC before they wasted their time on this.

[Bob @ Oct 28th 2008 9:40AM]

Uh... are you guys serious? They have to start somewhere. Someday our newspapers will be made of this stuff and they'll just hook up to our Wi-Fi and download the latest news. Usually new products go from grayscale to color, remember, it's called "innovation" and it has to start somewhere, duh. If NEC didn't come out with grayscale and start marketing that, they wouldn't have the extra cash to research how to do it in color. That's kind of a given guys, at least in my head it is.

[chefgon_ign @ Oct 28th 2008 9:42AM]

Did you seriously just write "50#'s" in an attempt to communicate weight? I think you've just taken poor grammar to exciting new levels.

[j_g_puff @ Oct 28th 2008 10:03AM]

@Bob,

We're not knocking the technology, we're just saying it's completely pointless - the colour one as well. Why bother with this when you can just get a screen out of an iPod touch and be done with it?

@ign,

That's a number sign. He was using it to indicate the number of books. It's the same as writing "...carrying around 50 numbers of books...". At least, i'm sure that's what he meant. You should consider de options before blasting someone's grammar.

[Conda @ Oct 28th 2008 10:23AM]

eh, whatever at the e-ink, is that Lightwave there in the picture? dont see that used often enough

@puff,

just as likely that he was using it to stand for lbs, since it is the pound sign...?

[j_g_puff @ Oct 28th 2008 10:26AM]

@Ana,

Wha? Lb-sign? It's a hash, and well you know it. It wouldn't make any sense otherwise.

[Christian Ritchie @ Oct 28th 2008 11:01AM]

@chefgon_ign-

Uhh, this symbol:
#
is commonly referred to as "pound sign" on every phone menu you've ever called. They call it this because, in the "old days" it was short hand for "pound" or "pounds".

[Phoenix @ Oct 28th 2008 12:34PM]

@J_g_puff

Because the iPod touch screen is backlit. Reading from a backlit screen for a long time hurts your eyes. However, reading from e-ink does not. This is why it is a better replacement for real paper.

[Josh @ Oct 28th 2008 12:59PM]

And finally, I'll be able to sit and work at a bar and look more like James Joyce than Bill Gates.

[matt. @ Oct 28th 2008 3:06PM]

chefgon_ign and a few others FYI:

The Symbol # has several names, some confusing. The most common is probably 'hash'.

In the US it is sometimes called the 'pound sign' and used as a symbol for pounds weight, but this confuses the British, for whom a pound sign is £. In music, of course, it is a 'sharp'. The picturesque name 'octothorpe' has also been introduced: it is said to have been invented by an employee of Bell Laboratories in the 1960s, in honour of the American athlete Jim Thorpe. In the large form in which it appears on modern telephones it is sometimes called 'square'.

(http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutsymbols/hashsymbol)

[Damo @ Oct 29th 2008 2:07PM]

Obviously I misjudged my attempt at humour.
I am very excited by the e-ink developments.
Not even a grin though? No?

[Ryan Trevisol @ Oct 28th 2008 9:28AM]

That 3d program looks terrible in eInk.

[j_g_puff @ Oct 28th 2008 10:11AM]

Ryan, you always look so professional in your avatar. I would pay you to re-design my IP stack any day...and that's not a euphemism. It actually does need redesigning.

[chefgon_ign @ Oct 28th 2008 9:38AM]

They aren't seriously showing off this tech with a graphic design program. That is pretty damn near the worst imaginable example of potential uses for this thing. At least they don't show it with a screenshot of Quake.

[Bob @ Oct 28th 2008 9:43AM]

They should have made it a newspaper. I could see this being a newspaper. Or they could integrate tiny cameras in it and make an invisibility cloak. Harry Potter FTW!

[Mike Schwager @ Oct 28th 2008 11:12AM]

Ok, for those who just don't get it:

Back in the day- say 1986- portable computers weighed in the 20-lb range and had 640x480 grayscale resolution. By 1993, I had a Powerbook 145 that weighed 7lbs, yet still sported a 640x480 passive grayscale screen. Terrible by today's standards. But what could you do? That was the state of technology. It's always evolutionary- even the revolutions. Now take a look at the MacBook Air. The old Powerbooks look like slide rules in comparison. So if you want to criticize this product, you are being entirely too myopic. The future is ePaper, where the contrast ratio is far and away better than even the monitor you're looking at right now, it's lighter, and it's lower power. One day you're going to see e-Paper "monitor"s hanging everywhere. Heck, you may even roll your computer into a tube one day, or fold it up.

The future is a computer that will make the MacBook Air look ancient by comparison. Our current cellphones will look fat and bulky. If you think 16-level grayscale is the limit of this technology, you never owned an old Powerbook. If you think the iPod Touch has the be-all and end-all of screen technology, you're not paying attention. And you don't read books. ...Backlight!? Criminy, I long for the day when the backlight is another quaint technological milestone. Give me something with the contrast ratio of good old paper! Make anti-glare coatings and washout in the sunlight a thing of the past! I want to take my laptop to St. Maarten and spend the rest of my life working from the beach, Mai Tai in hand (cute little fru-fru umbrella included).

[j_g_puff @ Oct 28th 2008 11:26AM]

You're myopic.

A quality pair of contacts will cut through the blur of sarcasm and reveal my obnoxious, ignorant comments for what they are: obvious trolling.

I generally try to keep my comments as constructive as possible, but sometimes you just gotta let yourself go and have a laugh. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

[B @ Oct 28th 2008 12:39PM]

You're using the Macbook Air as an example of state of the art technology?

[NewJohnny @ Oct 29th 2008 3:54AM]

You are completely right, and let me offer an example of a future application. The cost of this drops to 10 cents for a full color page, a plastic printable wireless chip is embedded on the back, and the whole thing is stuck on the front of a cereal box. Grocery shopping becomes akin to walking through an arcade with flashing lights and bouncing Trix rabbits up and down the aisles. We'll remember the good old days when groceries used to have static pictures and our kids/grandkids will roll their eyes.

[Chris McGuire @ Oct 28th 2008 2:21PM]

Is that a really old version of Newtek Lightwave 3d on the page?
www.newtek.com