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Technology Science

Philips Improves Electronic Paper 138

Posted by timothy from the wait-till-it's-on-snowboard-graphics dept.
Remco writes: "BBC News ) has a story about Philips apparently improving the quality of electronic paper. What they've done is instead of using sillicon, they've discovered a polymer for use in electronic paper. This makes it cheaper to produce and has the added bonus of providing 256 grey shades of gray." Philips has been working on flexible displays for a while as well as research on using plastic instead of silicon. here's an article we posted before about OLEDs, another one of the promising leads toward thin, low-power, cheap-to-make displays.
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Philips Improves Electronic Paper More

Philips Improves Electronic Paper

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  • when is this (or something like this) going to go on the market? and how much is it going to be?

  • Nice teaser article, but how cheap is cheap?

    When they can put a 25-page book together what accepts some sort of floppy disk or memory chip so you can read different books with it for under $50, then that's cheap. Until then, they may be using a different definition than you and I.

    • No no no! If you have good-quality electronic paper, why would you need more than 1 sheet? Making an actual book out of it would be a waste, why not just have a way of changing a page at a time as displayed on the sheet, or scrolling?
      • I think, as with most technology, things are developed in baby steps. To make such an all purpose single "e-page" would require additional electronics and a buttload of additional memory. All of that would make the things quite bulky and wouldn't be a considered a single page anymore. This is the just the first step to a truly stand alone, high-capacity electronic reader. Probably in ten to twenty years we could expect those. But, as I said, baby steps.
        • Why would displaying all that info on one page require more memory than putting it on 25? If you have 25 pages of data, it shouldn't matter how much is displayed at once. In fact, if this e-paper needs any kind of display memory (2D/2B only is small enough) then it would take more memory to have all those 25 sheets displaying info.

          good luck,
          SopWATh
          • It wouldn't. what I meant was if you had say LOTR that you wanted to display through one sheet of e-paper. You have to store the additonal text somewhere, while you read a page/line at a time. This is where some sort of storage would be necessary and high density storage isn't very flexible right now.
      • User interface, that's why. Clicking an onscreen button or rolling a jog-wheel is not the same as turning a page. Turning the page is physically easy to do, has great tactile feedback, and is very familiar.

        It's been noted before, but bears repeating: The book is an incredible device. Compact, durable, cheap, easy-to-use interface. It'll be hard one to surpass.
        • Turning the page is physically easy to do, has great tactile feedback, and is very familiar.


          Nice and familiar yes, but, probably not worth making the e-book thingy N times more expensive (where N is the number of pages in the e-book). Especially since IMHO people would end up using the "next page button" anyway, as it's easier than turning a page once you get used to it.


          The book is an incredible device. Compact, durable, cheap, easy-to-use interface.


          Books are nice, but not really cheap when you have to keep buying new ones all the time. That is, it's cheaper in the long run to pay a one-time $150 up-front fee for the e-book hardware than it is to pay $5-$45 every single time you want to read a new story.


          As for e-book content charges, you'll have your choice of downloading for-pay content, downloading free content, or just browsing the web using the snazzy wireless networking.. :^)

  • repeat! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by tplayford ( 308405 )
    This has been reported already [slashdot.org], silly timothy.
  • I guess this is cool, but every time I read Yes Another Article About Electronic Paper I get the feeling that it's going to be even longer before I can touch the stuff and take out my electronic pen and write on it. Someday maybe, but this seems to be about the same distance off as quantum computing...
  • So, how far off are rollout displays (Earth: Final Conflict, Red Planet, etc.) for my PDAs? Or for that matter, a cellular addon for pocket videoconferencing? *drool* I can imagine a rollout 72 inch wall-mounted TV, akin to the rollout white screen projectors use.. that plus a decent stereo and who needs to go *out* to the theater anymore? ;)

    At the risk of being labelled troll, "providing 256 grey shades of gray" is a stupid statement.. it wouldn't be 256 grey shades of color if it's grey, would it? :)
  • I've read articles about electronic paper for more than three years and yet I didn't see any of these products appear on the market...
    Is it just all vaporware, publicity for the inventors or does anyone really knows a place where you can buy/use any kind of electronic paper?
    • does anyone really knows a place where you can buy/use any kind of electronic paper?

      It's not available until they figure out exactly what will happen if you try to wipe your arse with a sheet of e-paper. :)
    • I have this thing that's just like electronic paper except it's box shaped.

      Yes, I've read many articles about all the advancements in digital paper. I figure that one of these days they will discover how to actually make it.

      -Kevin

  • There is only one 'l' in Philips, the company
  • All I want is electronic paper, color or black and white, that is cheap enough and has a good enough resolution that I can wall paper my room with geiss or another visualization. This would make me happy, and also probably quite dizzy.

  • These are coming sooner than you think (Score:4, Troll)

    by dfeldman ( 541102 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @06:12PM (#2676517) Homepage
    One of my buddies works at a competing manufacturer and has some very promising news about these displays. Although I'm not sure what the case is for the Philips units, production and deployment of his company's product is scheduled to be ramped up in February, with consumer products hitting the market around March 15th. Some of the tidbits that he leaked to me were:
    • The baseline, mass market model will have a resolution of 64dpi and cost roughly $0.50 per square inch for displays between 6 and 24 square inches. This includes the circuitry required to interface to an 8051 or other mpu.
    • A serial interface (ideal for connecting to a PC or BASIC stamp) will be offered around September 2002.
    • Resolutions of 128dpi and 256dpi will be available, albeit at a substantially increased cost.
    • These units take about 0.003 uA/pixel, which is substantially less than current LCD and OLCD offerings.
    • Work is being done to make the drivers' jobs easier. For instance, advances have been made that allow the driver to get away with only refreshing static data once every 3.5 seconds.


    df
    • 24inch means ~(5inch).. that's 25*25 cm, pretty big one.
      I _really_ don't understand what you are saying about serial connection because, what the hell, would they develop a monitor-style device without connection at all? and that even if they'd use parallel connection, is it that hard to implement some sort of buffering? This really doesn't make any sense.
    • Can you just tell me the name of their stock [ticker symbol] and when exactly they will issue an official press release?

      Thank you,

      B. Gayhtes, I mean ...

  • E-ink (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    E-Ink [eink.com] had *colored* *posters* of their electronic paper product shown in stores. [eink.com]

  • repeats (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by stiefvater ( 101844 )

    it's not that i mind the repeats. i mean, who cares if you see the story twice, right?

    what i DO mind, is that the editors of slashdot seem to have SO LITTLE concern for the material they produce. it makes me wish they cared about this news as much as i do.

    -k

  • You guys should stop harping (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Leeji ( 521631 ) <slashdot@@@leeholmes...com> on Saturday December 08, 2001 @06:19PM (#2676542) Homepage

    Like most scientific endeavors, this story is about an advance in the field, not its readiness for prime time.

    Let's look at some quotes that might help you next time:

    This five-centimetre-square ... brings affordable electronic paper a step closer, say its developers, Philips Research.

    But this display ... should be cheap to make in bulk

    In principle, this could be a low-cost solution ...

    It's a shame that nobody looks at this from its scientific merit -- after all, any "holy grail" technology is the culmination of a lot of baby steps.

  • I can't wait (Score:5, Funny)

    by abe ferlman ( 205607 ) <bgtrio@@@yahoo...com> on Saturday December 08, 2001 @06:28PM (#2676572) Homepage Journal
    Finally, books can be printed on a medium that respects the rights of authors! Once your reading license has expired, the pages will simply erase themselves. And a retinal scan can even be sure that no unauthorized readers get access to your prose!

    A new day is dawning for innovation, and the promise of the copyright system to encourage the creation of new works and the protection of the exclusive right of the rich to actually read anything that's ever been written is finally being fulfilled.

    I know I'm not alone when I say "It's about time! Thanks, Phillips!"
  • And flexible?

    Is it truly comparable to paper paper?

    I realise it is not worth making a tradional book out of this stuff - why have 300 pages when you can have one which changes on demand - but there may be some cases where you want multiple sheets and if it's too thick it is going to encounter resistance from bibliophiles.

  • e paper's achille's heel? = backplane electronics (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Chemist ( 62398 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @06:28PM (#2676575)
    as a papermaker, I have seen all of the approaches to epaper. Most recently these were presented at NIP 18 (Intnl Conf Nonimpact Printing) in Ft Lauderdale. The main problem would seem to be the approaches ALL require backplane electronics to make the stuff work. Therefore you induce a charge to get proper sphere alignment, once acheived until a new charge is induced they aintain their orientation.
    So, don't charge out and invest in e paper; as right now the berst application is point of purchase displays. An interesting concept, but the economics are not there yet, except for perhaps specialty applications. Once they can make dirt cheap backplanes by printing them, then perhaps it can make inroads on paper. However, don't hold your breath. Wonder if an informed reply will bet a better score?
    • Wonder if an informed reply will [get] a better score?

      Empirical evidence suggests that an uninformed but emotional response will typically fare better than a calm, informed response. Assuming, of course, the emotions are directed at the correct parties..
      ;-P
    • Papermaker? You make the substrates or the content? Big difference.

      I work for a content publisher, and let me tell you that the people who manage my place of employment would love nothing better that to get a leg up on companies that make the paper we produce our content on. Our share price is tied to the price of a roll of paper. As such, cheap, easy to produce e-paper would provide an effective bargaining tool to keep the price of wood based paper cheap and our stock price up.

      I'm not sure they would even consider the hacker angle of e-paper. You know - I get The Daily News, and use my hacked e-paper reciever to transmit that content to all my friends. That would do wonders for the stock price, eh?

      The scariest part of e-paper is the fact that unless you had some control over it, the content provider could actually change the content on you without your knowlege. When it's printed in ink on real paper, you have to print a retraction or correction, not just edit the content already out there. Same thing as money - I'll use e-commerce as long as real paper money exists. The virtual world is too un-trustworthy to use as anything other than a convenience.

      IOW, your assertion is correct - that paper and ink will be around for some time to come, but your reasons for that being the case are, IMHO, incorrect.

      Soko
      • I work for a content publisher, and let me tell you that the people who manage my place of employment would love nothing better that to get a leg up on companies that make the paper we produce our content on.

        My father works for the largest paper company in the world and the economics you need are fairly simple. The biggest influence is lumber value and operation costs. Year after year IP grows more trees than any other company I know. Year after year people need more lumber. If IP can make good money selling some of the lumber, then they will; that means less paper and higher prices (more demand). And as for operation costs, they just keep rising.

        Our share price is tied to the price of a roll of paper. As such, cheap, easy to produce e-paper would provide an effective bargaining tool to keep the price of wood based paper cheap and our stock price up.

        Very doubtful. If you want some hope then look to China, they are starting some big paper manf in the next few years. You should see results in 6-8 years or so.

      • gee, duh; a papermaker who is a chemist? see my login?
        I make paper, the kind made on a fourdinier paper machine, coated and calendered. We at the papermakers would like a leg up on the content providers, as they are typically greedy sharks who want more for less. They bend us over backward to do things, many times suggested by non-technical types, who don't know what they are doing when it comes to printing. If you think e papers are your solution you've just proved how uniformed you are. BTW have you noticed this year how many mills have closed? That's due to the push to sell for less makes it harder for older mills to be competative; and that is due to the push my content providers and their agents to aquire paper at the lowest possible prices.

        On a brighter note the content provider employ lots of english majors don't they. Wow, I bet they can figure out how to make new products REALLY well.

        Amd my reasons are incorrect?? Sonny I've been doing his for 27 years, and think I know more about paper than you EVER heard.
  • ...one of the intelligent books from Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks [amazon.com]?
  • Slashdot: news for nerds, stuff that repeats itself.
  • This looks great, but there is deffinetly a bad side to it. Imagine the advertisements if they made video capable e-paper. It would be flashing and glitzing all over the place.

  • e-paper needs to be white (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jdclucidly ( 520630 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @06:39PM (#2676595) Homepage
    IMHO, e-paper needs to be white. From the photo in this article, it's the same color as your old LCD screen. This presents a problem when going for 256 gray-scale in games/apps because your white is already 25% gray. The real hoop to jump through is finding a way to bleach the proteins and platics while maintaining their functionallity.

  • This again? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bi()hazard ( 323405 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @06:41PM (#2676599) Homepage Journal
    We might be tired of hearing about this stuff...but book and magazine publishers won't be. They can't wait to set up a digital rights management sytem that will allow them to force restrictive licenses on users.

    History shows that digital rights management only applies to the right to profit-it has nothing to do with consumers rights. Losing the ability to do whatever you want, short of commercial republication, with your purchases will nullify many of the benefits oof digital paper. When I buy a book or newspaper, I like to know that I've actually bought it rather than licensed it for some term, and that I will always have the ability to read it whenever I desire. Anyone who believes that when electronic paper is available publishers will play by the same rules they have no choice but to follow now is naive.

    Keep in mind that copy protection won't be too hard to enforce for books and magazines that choose to keep up physical distribution lines. How many people did you see pirating N64 games? Hardly anyone has the ability to write to a cartridge, so if these papers took their input from a cartridge piracy would not be easy. Companies wouldn't need to reduce our rights-but rest assured, they will anyway, I'm just pointing out why any moves on their part will necessarily be due to impure motives.

    On the other hand, there are tradeoffs for the rest of the world. Even with all the recycling of paper (and most of it still gets thrown out), trees still need to get cut, and paper has a limit to how many times it can be recycled (eventually the fibres break down). Not to mention the fact that rather nasty chemicals are used in its production, have you ever smelled the air around a paper plant?. Digital paper will last far longer and one sheet can display a variety of content; this will dramatically reduce the usage of wood based paper. Expect to see environmentalists and civil rights advocates at each others' throats over this issue.

    • How many people did you see pirating N64 games? Hardly anyone has the ability to write to a cartridge, so if these papers took their input from a cartridge piracy would not be easy.

      Nintendo 64 piracy was hard because every official cartridge in a territory had an identical "key" chip. The mechanism by which the Nintendo cartridge lock/key system (used on NES, Super NES, and N64) works is patented (until about 2005), and it relies on a program that's copyrighted (effectively forever), letting Nintendo go after backup devices.

      Game Boy Advance, on the other hand, has no encryption and no lockout. The only checks its BIOS does are checks for the Nintendo logo (legal to reproduce under Sega v. Accolade [eff.org]) and a simple checksum on the ROM header. Its cartridge interface (multiplexed address bus and data bus) has the Intellivision's system as prior art. And you can get a development kit with a cartridge writer and a flash cartridge that holds 256 megabits (enough for four to eight official ROMs or even more independently produced ROMs) for under $200. Go to gbadev.org [gbadev.org] for details.

      Don't steal games. Just because piracy is easy doesn't mean you should do it. Instead, download games released under a free software (or even just free-beer) license. In the future, I will be releasing some free GBA games here [evilpigeon.net].

    • My prediction is that e-paper systems that try to enforce draconian copyright schemes will fail in the marketplace, as people will by the more open systems instead.


      In fact, my real prediction is that the 'killer app' for this display will be a simple wireless web browser. Such a device would allow you to read books, as well as everything else the web has to offer.

  • Not that my reply is related to this particular news in particular, but I think electronic paper will do wonders for the world. Finally, we can get rid of superexpensive and easily breakable screens in otherwise cheap and primitive equipment, and all those home projects.

    Its actually specifically with home projects I think electronic paper will become a success. Most people dont make $3m a year, and although old computer parts are usually easy to come by, quality display components arent.
  • ... Microsoft makes Philips a deal they can't refuse and Philips creates paper driven by Windows CE?

    That would mean we'd have a piece of paper that starts with a splash screen, followed by some kind of EULA "agreement", then "content" provided by Microsoft "partners".

    Can't hardly wait...

  • Who, me? (Score:5, Funny)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @06:58PM (#2676642) Homepage
    "Cheatsheet? Er, no, ma'am -- look, it's blank paper..."
  • We can wipe our ass with the computer if it crashes again?`
  • MS are working on the eBook concept, how would digital paper affect this? Competition or complement it?
  • This kind of technology probably won't displace LCD/CRT anytime soon. But it's getting pretty close to the point where it's good enough to allow some really neat stuff that you can't do with LCD's or CRT's. For example, put this stuff on a T-shirt and you can put Thinkgeek's T-shirt division out of business.

    Think of e-paper as of PDA's. PDA's are not sufficiently generic to replace the PC anytime soon or probably ever. But still they can be very useful. And just the fact that you can take them with you has spurned companies to market them as fashion accessories. Similary, e-paper is not a general purpose display solution. But as a fashion accessory it's unbeatable.

    PS: I'm starting to buy into the theory that the /. editors recycle news on weekends on purpose (and I think Timothy has agreed to take the blame? Or maybe they run a pool): the story link was still visited from the last time..

  • Heh (Score:1, Redundant)

    by soulsteal ( 104635 )
    This makes it cheaper to produce and has the added bonus of providing 256 grey shades of gray .

    Article description provided by the Department of Redundancy Department.
  • this could be good for the Flat panel monitor. if it is cheap to make and can scale well to lage sizes this could become an ultrathin TFT monitor that costs no more than 20 bucks.
  • I cannot wait for the release of this sort of product. I hate reading manuals from the computer screen. Imagine being able to lean back in a comfortable chair and hold those ebooks in your hand and not having to stare at a monitor.

  • hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by axioein ( 540940 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @07:25PM (#2676705)
    Immagine the paper airplane I could make out of tihs.... It would be the most hi-tech paper plane... It could have an inflight video!

  • Cluster (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08, 2001 @07:26PM (#2676710)
    And now just imagine a toilet paper roll of these!
  • I can cover my walls with this stuff for only 30 grand.
  • get a seperate electronic paper section on /. ?

  • 256 grey shades of gray? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "providing 256 grey shades of gray."

    shit i wanted 256 BLUE shades of gray.

    & which is it grey or gray? are you canadian or what eh?

  • duplicate (Score:2, Informative)

    by global_diffusion ( 540737 )
    Please see Thursday's [slashdot.org] article.
  • ...and has the added bonus of providing 256 grey shades of gray.

    In related news, researches in Zurich have been making inroads into using flamingo enzymes to make e-paper. Currently the technique allows only for 256 grey shades of fleurescent pink, but Chief Scientist Dr Fandango promises - "It grows on you".
  • Can't we require that people with access to post front page articles actually have to semi-regularly read Slashdot themselves so we can avoid continually duplicating stories?
  • How are you going to watch porn without the paper burning up?
  • Why do I need electronic paper? my tree pulp paper is doing just fine! KILL THE RAIN FORESTS!!

    seriously, though, think of the posabilities! Computer screens 25in+ at the fraction of the cost with better graphics! one of the most expensive parts of the computer is the monitor, so Im all for companies that want to reduce the cost.

    --theKiyote
  • Cute. Can't even agree on a spelling of the word within the same sentence?
  • I can see where this is leading to: Toilet paper that talks back.

  • The first time around [slashdot.org]

    Damnit Timmy, don't you even read /.?
  • In the newspaper industry, you can hear the nervous talk about e-paper. The only real barrier to entry in publishing a paper is either access to a press or owning one, and for a daily paper you basically need to own your own press. The other pieces involved in making a newspaper cost next to nothing compared to the press, ink, paper, film, plates, typesetters, benders, and employing skilled pressmen. Journalists, pre-press staff, workstations, DTP software, wire feeds, photo development (digital now), etc. are all widely available and don't take millions in capital or the help of a vendor or consultant to put in place. The high cost of owning and running a press is what keeps competition between newspapers limited to the paper(s) owned by the city's local plutocrats, papers from media conglomerates (USA Today, Tribune-owned papers, etc.) and the local weeklies that earn their living criticizing the mistakes of first two. The local weeklies usually rent the use of a commercial press, which is why they're stuck coming out only once a week. The cost of starting your own paper is so high, they say you're better off to just bury your millions in your back yard and wait to see it goes up in value. It can be done, but it's a very expensive business to try to start from scratch.

    Once you've got e-paper, all that is gone. Newspaper publication becomes no more expensive than web site publication, and may actually be cheaper as you may not have the "slashdot penalty", depending on how you offer your epaper over the internet: micropayments, free, suscriber only, etc.

    - Newspapers can be distributed by a vending machine equipped with USB, irDA, 802.11, maybe bluetooth, maybe a CompactFlash card writer. Pay via your cell-phone, magnetic card swipe, or plain old coins.

    - The vending machine will be the barrier to entry, i.e. the equivelent of owning a press. Consequently, the rich will try their best to corner all the vending machines, especially in airports, schools, and restaurants.

    - However, someone will figure out they can make more money with less risk if they just charge a commision on each paper sold and then just offer more titles to choose from (out-of-town newspapers, typical newstand magazines, snap-shots of popular web sites, e-text novels, indy and alternative papers, adult material, mail-order catalogs, maybe interactive games or puzzles).

    - The idea that each e-paper reader will only hold 1 title is just stupid. The free market will tear that fantasy to shreds. To just read 60-80 dpi grayscale books, the guts of a PDA from 2 or 3 years ago would be enough to hold a week or two of issues and a half-dozen full-length novels and still be cheap. It might also double as a PDA, especially if they power consumption is better and you can fold it up to fit your pockets. The media outlets will give away crappy ones, but the aftermarket and PDA vendors will take it from there, offering models that give you more freedom (more storage, ports) for just a little more money.

    - DRM is going to vary. Big media outlets will definately use it, but your indy papers may let it go, and some pubs may deliberately shun including DRM in their issues as a nod to their customers. FE, if Project Gutenberg or Ibiblio can get in the game, it's reasonably certain those docs won't expire on you. You're probably going to see what's already happened with DVD players and region encoding. DMCA or not, word will get out which models can be made to bypass the DRM. The black market will not let this slide by them.

    Personally, I'm more interested in when they will develop table-top displays with biometrics. Imagine an epaper screen covering the entire dining table that can distinguish between finger taps, a stylus, and irrelevant pressure to ignore, like a coffee cup or elbows set on the table. A little handwriting recognition, a PC rackmounted underneath, and you've got a nice desk to work on (or play StarCraft...).
  • Phillips charged for conspiracy to place "spikes of death," used to maim and kill loggers, in forrests; California enviornmental groups outraged. Activist quoted as saying "damn it, we thought of it first!"

  • Wow! (Score:2, Funny)

    by he-sk ( 103163 )
    I mean: 256 grey shades of gray! Way cool!
  • [Knock,knock]
    - Who's there ?
    - YADDP
    - Who ?
    - YADDP
    - WTF is YADDP ?
    - "Yet another dump duplicate posting"

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/06/0444 20 9&mode=thread

    Guys, here is an "intelligent 4:06am (CET) proposal": Why don't you all Super GooRoo moderators simply admit the inevitable and get an YADP counter associated w/ _your_ own personal karma (or whatever makes you proud e.g. wall clock booting times ?)
  • Saw this over on yahoo news the other day also. The article is here [yahoo.com].

    Looks like a great idea! Ever since I read the Diamond Age (by Neal Stephenson) I've wanted to carry all my books in one sheet of paper.

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