LG Display's 19-inch E Ink display plays loose with the truth
By Thomas Ricker 
posted January 15th 2010 8:14AM
posted January 15th 2010 8:14AM
posted January 15th 2010 8:14AM
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Funny that paper of yours, for a second I swore I saw a picture move. ...Harry Potter, who's Harry Potter?
@bigdonny Oh. Um. No one. Bit of a tosser.
It would be nice if you could go to the next page with an e-reader with the flip of a page like that... the way I see it, have 4 pages, 2 on each side. When the user flip ahead, then there will be 3 on left, 1 on right. The bottom on left should then be moved to the right to balance it again. It's not going to be cheap, and not as quiet as a normal book, but you gotta pay a price to impress your friends!
@pavlindrom
I read this story on my phone.
@Luke
Unimpressed.
@Luke And I downranked you to oblivion on my phone. ;D
Who the hell needs a big floppy tablet? Accidentally crease that thing one time and it'll stop working. I'm not saying the concept isn't nice in ideal conditions or for certain types of presentations, but I doubt if you'd want to use it on a crowded train.
Still, that monochrome ink is not what I'm looking for. I doubt if it would be good for watching movies. I'm sure the Apple tablet will have this beat by a long-shot, but it's good that LG keeps pushing that type of technology.
@Average White Boy
+1 for observation about floppy displays, creases, and use on overcrowded trains
-100 for obvious apple fanboy comment
This tech is way better suited to static installations such as dynamic poster wrapped around pillers (when colour arrives). Think Blade Runner. Why replace a compact device such as a large screen smart phone - the idea way to read the news with a medium that is as cumbersome as regular newspapers? The tech is amazing but they are targeting the wrong market!
some day i'm gonna be impressed by black on gray.....
Seems like black and white always comes before color. If it is cheap the Harry Potter reference might be right on with posters on the wall.
Newspapers are mostly monochrome, 400 years into their existence. I don't see why people won't care about monchrome e-ink displays.
Also, why would you want to watch movies on an e-book reader? Why not buy a PMP?
@thoughtmonster: you speak true my friend.
Sometimes Engadget bloggers are very narrowsighted in their comments:
"...assuming anyone still cares about monochrome E Ink displays by then."
With physical print dying out, and books going electronic, how could you not think that the demand for e-ink displays will increase? Maybe it's because I'm a programmer and stare at a monitor all day, but I really don't want photons beaming into my eyes during recreation too.
Will it be recyclable?
Is it just me, or is the guy on the left totally checking out her caboose?
@hobbes28
Yeah! And the guy on the right, his sports coat still has the designer label on the left sleeve!
Firstly, you can all have the e-paper, I will take that fine fine girl. :) Secondly, the guy next to her looks like the guy from the Jimmy Johns commercial with the robots. :)
Why couldn't they make the other componants be external to the display? Say an iPhone sized device that you connect to your floppy screen to get the data. Don't want to be thethered? Disconnect the cable and you can read the same page all day without the need for the rest of the device!
@Musicman247
Yo fool, even just the display needs chips to make the display work (line drivers, capacitors, etc.) and I understand or am told that silicon is not flexible. They also fail to mention how that e-ink bubbles break when pushed hard or with a sharp object. The largest papers in the world are color, started some time like 10 years ago so even papers are color. and yes it is shades of gray on gray there is no white or black in an e-ink device.
@ReaderGuy
True true, but you could have added and not subtracted because what you also say is false false.
Thin film, flexible electronics have been shown and are developing, thin film solar already exists and is flexible enough to wrap onto a surface.
The four layer paper, 1)touch 2)screen 3)electronics and 4)solar is already possible but not yet practical. This in the first instance could roll up into a thin box at one end (like a blind) that is battery and other chunky stuff
Next the four layer, or at least the touch, solar and display layers and even potentially a battery layer will be a meta material that also provide haptics using a strategy like goosebumps.
Unfortunately for the metamaterial version, it will be fighting for survival by the next gen of computing display which will look like a badge and sit on your upper pectoral, collect power, sense every hand motion by the subtle shifting of your pectoral and wirelessly broadcast an image direct to your optic nerve.
@Zueq then throw in a few cameras for a weird B&W invisibility suit.
The only reason newspapers are so big is because they want to fit a ton of crap on the front page and they want to jam a ton of classifieds in there. These electronic versions do not need to be so big.
@fastm3driver Not to mention that the newspaper classifieds have been dead since craigslist and Monster.com showed up. Local papers are still pissed about that.
Not buying it if it gives me epaper cuts
Enough of this 'only flexible when of no use' e-ink nonsense!
I want to see more Gyricon based e-paper! The plastic paper you can 'reprint' yourself by feeding it through a laminator like device. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epaper#Gyricon
It's hardly nonsense. The initial goal of these flexible displays isn't to make the device itself flexible, but more durable! Flexible plastic substrates won't crack quite as easily as the rigid glass ones that eInk is currently manufactured on.
How many times do we need to go over this until you get it right? E-Ink is a brand. E-paper is a generic term for the technology. This technology doesn't seem to have anything to do with E-Ink.
@Reikon
Xerox was a brand too, as was centronics, sometimes people take over brands and put them into common language.
Plus the link came via "e-ink-info".
It's hardly nonsense. The initial goal of these flexible displays isn't to make the device itself flexible, but more durable! Flexible plastic substrates won't crack quite as easily as the rigid glass ones that eInk is currently manufactured on.
Shoot, this was suppose to be under Mike's post.
I agree with Josh et all that the e readers are naff except for a limited, certain type of usage.
Before the Kindle and others came out our vision of an e reader was something like what we see in this picture. Maybe starting out a bit chuncky and expensive but soon going the way home DVD players went (over a thousand dollars but within a few years as low as fifty dollars) then suddenly they are practically full blow slates/tablets costing more than some actual note/netbooks? WTF talk about feature creep; more like feature pounce.
On top of that we expected them to be open systems like the PC where anyone could build them and they would run anything in their format but we end up in straitjackets, bound to certain content cartels. Screw that.
I will only be interested in an e reader when they are so mass produced and cheap that hobos are using them as blankets.
The CEO of that british e-reader maker said they made their e-reader slightly flexible in a prototype but people didn't like it since they felt they might break it by folding it too much, showing that it's not just the manufacturers that are responsible for keeping it sturdier.
I think the flexibility would be mostly for putting it on pillars for ads/info and on dashboards and designs maybe, rigid but following curves.
I expect LaCie to use it on one of their portable drives at some point, a simple e-paper that shows used diskspace blended into the design of the case would be sort of nice.
I know lexar already did it in 2006, but that was a simple strip and rather unimaginative.
http://www.eink.com/press/images/image_release_90.html
Does anyone remember the phones from Earth: Final Conflict? I want one of those.