Let's look at E-Ink

You should see if you can get one of the laptops that had the Pixel Qi screen or even buy an OLPC. It wasn’t e-paper but it was a hybrid transreflective lcd that could switch between a transmissive color mode an extremely high contrast reflective monochrome mode.

John Laur

No problem! I couldn't forgive myself for /not/ linking to your video since it goes hand-in-hand with the Sony Reader!

Technology Connections

Someone did actually combine eink (well perhaps eink like at least) and regular color computer screen: <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display</a>

Lennart Sorensen

I’m a bit behind in watching this one. Many thanks for the ‘shout out” (that’s what the kids say isn’t it?) at the beginning.

Techmoan

Seconding other commenters about looking at the ReMarkable tablet and the Sony DPS. I have a ReMarkable, and I use it heavily for writing and sketching without noticing a lag in the pen strokes. Turning the page, erasing and changing layers do have the traditional eink lag.

Dr. Mrs the Meerman (Meer as in “mere mortals” not “mermaid”)

I loved my prs-505 - got one in red with custom firmware on it that allows for playing sudoku and chess too. Great for a break from the book you're reading

ck3ml

Finally had a chance to watch the whole video. I have to say, this is one of your best videos yet! Extremely well researched, you explained and summarized it really well, and it was really educational. Also fun to watch with your jokes scattered in (50 Shades of Grey haha) One thing I've wondered though that you didn't explore is.... if that is how the black/white/grey works (the white particles in the black ink), then how does COLOR E-INK work? How would they get multi-colour particles and electrify only specific colors while still having high enough resolution?

Insider Chad

I have one, is a decent monitor. Tablet is good because it's unlocked Android. They have some quality control issues, so get an extended warranty and back up often. I'd also discourage you from using the stylus, putting a screen protector on it without bubbles is nearly impossible.

Someone may have commented about it already, but I wanted to bring up the ReMarkable tablet! I bought one as a sketchbook replacement and its pretty awesome, and really feels like paper!

Artie

Love the new lighting and it's so much better than previously used. I guess the added height and ability to move them around and to then fix into position really does help. Audio is fine and if you're worried about echoes then string curtains around, they'll immediately help to re-leave the problem.

Colin Grimshaw

The Pebble screen was never either e-ink nor ePaper, it's a Sharp Memory LCD. Just an LCD, but with on-screen memory so it can keep contents without active refresh leading to low power consumption for static images, but with nothing else in common with the "paper" technologies.

Kilrah

That's another subject I have always wondered about. You do keep finding them. :-) Well done, another great script and video.

Stephen Bell

Lenovo came out last year with a laptop that used an eInk panel in the place most put a physical keyboard. IIRC, you could select to use it as a virtual keyboard, touch input or display. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18019840/lenovo-yoga-book-c930-review-e-ink-tablet-laptop-windows" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18019840/lenovo-yoga-book-c930-review-e-ink-tablet-laptop-windows</a>

Ehood Garmiza

Bobak Ferdowsi (the guy at the landing of Curiosity on Mars with a mohawk) wrote a great article about his idea of using e-ink on the side of spacecraft for navigation: <a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/satellites/a22553553/e-ink-satellite/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/satellites/a22553553/e-ink-satellite/</a>

Kevin McCoy

There's a subtle difference between some of the epaper and eink displays. For example, the pebble has an epaper display, but not an eink display. the pebble's screen is closer to a typical lcd, and has faster refresh rates, and doesn't need the flashing to refresh the screen. however, it does take a small amount of current to keep a static image displayed. updating the image takes a lot more power. Power is used as whole rows on the original pebble, so updating 1 pixel in a row costs the same as updating all the pixels in a row. On later pebbles, the screen internally is rotated, so it's columns instead of rows, but the same idea. This is why watch faces that have analog second hands have significantly worse battery life than faces that don't display seconds at all. The pebble time even has a color epaper display, which has decent visibility in direct sunlight, but not quite the contrast of the black and white epaper. the pebble 2 display has even more contrast than the pebble 1.

adcurtin

That sudden cut really elevates it from a groaner to pure gold.

urbanhusky

I saw your YouTube comment that your Pebble screen died. I have two of the original black Pebble watches gathering dust somewhere. They both worked when I put them away last time. One is a kickstarter edition and the other is just a standard one. You’re welcome to have either or both of them... I’m definitely never going to use either one. In Chicago.

PT

Nice, didn't know of these. There's the ReMarkable tablet that I had always been looking at but always found too expensive, and the Mobiscribe that just became available-ish via crowdfunding - backed early so I already received it. Even if it's a bit small it's my favorite implementation so far since it runs Android so you can find ways to do stuff that are a bit more flexible than with the other single-purpose ones. Hope they make a 10" version later...

Kilrah

I haven't even done them yet, so no attention was paid at all! Those are still the auto-generated captions you were seeing.

Technology Connections

What!?! During the ending credits there's [Music]? Not [Excruciatingly Smooth Jazz] or some other synonym? Also, electro wedding displays? You didn't pay your usual attention to your captioning.

Mike Bird

Hi, great video! After watching it, I remember a company , around 2011, called 'Pixel Qi' who claimed to make something similar to the idea of an e-ink display for laptops, although using some form of LCD instead of e-ink. It didn't end up well and the company is now dead, but for a time there were even other companies releasing machines with their technology. I'll leave you a link to wikipedia in case you are curious about it: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Qi" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Qi</a>

It seems like the Sony Reader you feature uses the first-generation E-Ink technology. The first-generation Barnes &amp; Noble Nook used that, but B&amp;N was dissatisfied with using it for control enough that they equipped their models with a second small color LCD at the bottom. My second-generation B&amp;N Nook (also branded as SimpleTouch) removed that, but it has the next step up in E-Ink technology, the E-Ink Pearl; rather than refreshing the screen every time the page is changed, it would simply refresh the changed pixels. (But to prevent artifacts from accumulating, it would do a complete refresh every six page turns.) Also, you mention at the end of the video your wish for an E-Ink device that you can take notes on and browse the web: there does exist one, it's called the Sony Digital Paper System. I have one of those, and it's considerably lighter and thinner than any of my tablets.

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

The effort preparing the set worked: I can’t tell it’s changed beyond knowing about the table, and possibly minor position changes that vary from episode to episode naturally. Well done. Interesting video on eInk too. Did you know about the eInk connection to the One Laptop Per Child project? Ewen

Ewen McNeill

I visited the company that made eInk in 2009 in Taiwan. They had a color screen working at that point, but the colors were muted (like the color in early 19th &amp; 20th century photos). I seem to remember 5 years or so later at least one company productized it, but I can't for the life of me think who it was. They weren't a big name company.

Big Car

The set is looking good! But the gap between the center shelve and the smaller outer shelves still looks too big and not yet uniform. Especially at the right, from the viewer's perspective.

raytsh

Nope they didn't, see the other comments about it above. Common misconception due to misleading early marketing material.

Kilrah

The Pebble watches used e-ink displays, even colour ones on their Pebble Time variants, gave amazing battery like to a semi-smart watch :( boo hiss they are gone

Phily

Hi Alec: Vince C. here. As usual, I've enjoyed the video and learning something as well. To date, I don't own an "e reader" of any type but I have seriously considered purchasing one. You may have given me the PUSH I need, Thanks. Be well. VGC

Vincent G. Calvacca

You haven't had an e-paper device on which you can scroll. It's terrible, would be unusable for code, you see nothing but a messy blur when scrolling so you don't know where you're going, then the display is full of trails until it does a full refresh. That's why it's usually on devices that behave page-based.

Kilrah

For something taking e-ink a step further look at the Mobiscribe tablet, it's basically an e-reader, but it's a full Android device with wifi, SD, full capacitive touch AND a Wacom-style panel backing for a pen, which makes it into a real electronic "paper notepad". I received mine about a month ago, and it works really great. Pen is pressure sensitive, response to pen strokes is fast, display surface feels surprisingly paper-like, contrast is good, resolution is high, it's got a front lighting for dark conditions with both blue and amber LEDs so you can set the light color to any combination of both you prefer, you can choose from/load custom page grid templates, you can also annotate PDFs with the pen etc. Obviously the slow screen (and relatively basic hardware) is a bit awkward to use most apps (scrolling is particularly bad) so you're not going to use it as a regular tablet, but the fact it runs Android is allows you to load cloud/p2p sync apps, email clients etc so you can actually do stuff with/transfer your scribblings straight away to whatever you'd want, or... print them? Had been waiting for that for quite some time. I've been using it to write some stuff down while working at the workshop, when done click export, it puts a PDF in my Syncthing folder, by the time I'm back at the office I've got a copy on my PC that I can straight put into our docs folder. BTW about the laptop - Lenovo has the Yoga Book, one normal display and instead of the keyboard you've got an e-ink display that can show any keyboard you want (typing without physical keys sucks of course though) or use it to take notes or display books with the device in tablet mode.

Kilrah

Why not have a (fake) tattoo saying E-Ink put on your cheek? Then you can play on the pun of Ink as well.

Mike Bird

Loving this episode! I've always been fascinated by e-Ink. New set is looking really nice!! An idea for the TV's I had commented on the earlier HQ video, you mentioned Chromecast being a pain. Since you're putting still images on the screens, most TV's have a USB port on the back for plugging a USB key that you can store photos on and then have the photo display on the TV through a media menu on the remote. So you could get a USB extension cable (something like this <a href="https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Extension-Cable-Male-Female/dp/B00NH11PEY/)" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Extension-Cable-Male-Female/dp/B00NH11PEY/)</a> and plug one into each TV, and have the cable come out on the left side of your shelf where you have that space for your desk. Then just get 2 cheap USB keys, put your 3840 x 2160 grid graphics on them and plug them into the extension USB so you have easy access without having to touch the TV's. You could then have multiple variations of the jpg's on the USB keys and easily swap through them with the TV remote ;)

Insider Chad

Oh, that maniacal laugh at the 50 Shades of Grey joke ^_^

Linh Pham

I might make that change... I'll need to look for a still like that. When I do thumbnails like these, I like to use a still from the actual video, rather than stage it. It feels more genuine that way

Technology Connections

E-ink is fascinating, I'm so glad you're taking a look at it. Glad I have something to watch while I'm stuck waiting for a doctor. Edit: that was great, but I'm still stuck here for another half hour... Good thing I brought my Kindle!

David Groover

I had (and loved!) an original Pebble, and I always found the ePaper designation a little dubious. It looked to me like an LCD, and certainly wasn't electrophoretic. I never had a Pebble Time, though in videos it looked to be the same display tech. It certainly wasn't bad, I enjoyed it quite a lot, but it wasn't the truly paper-like experience of an e-reader.

Technology Connections

Have you heard of the Onyx Boox MAX 2? That is a 13 inch e-reader with an HDMI input that allows it to act as a monitor. The display is fairly laggy (as you might imagine) but it does work. There are review videos online showing it off. I've considered buying one myself but the $750 price tag puts me off.

Tyler Knott

Look into the ePaper display on Pebble smartwatches (RIP). They've got 64 colors, good viewing angles, work in all light conditions, use no battery for a static image (good for always-on watches), and can refresh at 30fps.

N

I think I'd rather see a pic of you with a goofy smile on the e-reader.

William Gray

Agree on the e-ink computer screen, I do a lot of scripting and coding, it would be more pleasant on e-ink.

I like the thumbnail. I think it does stand out enough for it to be noticed.

Christopher Beattie