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French display company Nemoptic reportedly goes bankrupt
Remember that dual-mode OLED / Binem display from yesterday? Well, then you might want to hang onto those memories, as the company behind it has apparently now gone bankrupt. While there's no official word from the company itself, French website Actualitte is reporting that the company, Nemoptic, was more than three million euros in debt and has been unable to find a buyer to bail it out. Of course, there's always a chance that another company could now swoop in and pick up Nemoptic's IP now that it's in receivership, though there's obviously no guarantees.
Nemoptic shows off OLED screen with dual-mode Binem display
We've already seen some of Nemoptic's so-called Binem displays on their own, but the company's just made things considerably more interesting by combing the low-power, black-and-white display with a full color OLED. That would function as a dual-mode display (a la Pixel Qi), giving you the ability to use the reflective Binem component when you're outdoors or just looking to save power, and switch to the OLED as needed. What's more, the Binem display can actually retain an image even when the power is off, which could let you spruce up your e-reader with a favorite image as a persistent wallpaper, for instance. Unfortunately, there's no word as to when the display might make it into an actual product, but you can check it out in action in the video after the break.
Nemoptic's Active Matrix Binem displays look perfect for your low-power Game Boy (video)
While the grocery stores in our hood are apparently a little too low-tech for the stuff, Nemoptic has made quite a name for itself in produce circles with its tiny, cheap e-paper price tags, able to reflect the continually rising costs of Cap'n Crunch. Now the company is branching out with rather more high-tech but still tiny displays called Binem Active Matrix E-paper, which show a variety of interesting tricks in a series of videos from June that Technology Review is just now bringing to light. The two-inch, 170dpi screens can manage a 30ms refresh rate -- just fast enough to handle video -- and can do partial refreshing, changing only portions of the display. Perhaps most interestingly the screens can be backlit, meaning they use a rather different construction than traditional E-Ink, but exactly how they work has yet to be disclosed. Check out the thrilling demonstration after the break and see if you can solve the mystery.
